POLITICS JANUARY 12, 2012
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The GOP primary is not over yet, but, with Mitt Romney firmly in control of the race, it isn’t too soon to begin asking: Who might he select as his running mate? I recently asked about a dozen Republican insiders who they would want to see on a ticket with Romney. (A couple balked at the notion that Romney was a lock for the nomination, but most agreed it was a logical assumption.) The most striking thing that emerged from these conversations was that some Republicans are a lot more excited about the vice presidential choices than about the presidential ones. “We have more instantly credible vice presidents than we do people running for president,” said Ed Rogers, co-founder with Haley Barbour of the public relations group BGR and a veteran of the Bush-Quayle campaign. Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who did outreach for McCain-Palin in 2008, said essentially the same thing: “There is probably more enthusiasm for the potential V.P. pick than there is for the overall Republican field.” Here are the names that came up most frequently during my conversations—listed roughly in order of the aggregate enthusiasm they garnered.
MARCO RUBIO
Pros: Rubio, the freshman senator from Florida and the son of Cuban immigrants, was named by almost everyone with whom I spoke. Many Republicans think he gives them a shot at winning a significant number of Latino voters, and it stands to reason that he would also deliver Florida, a key swing state. Perhaps most important, Rubio is acceptable to every faction within the GOP: the Tea Partiers, the establishment, and social conservatives.
Cons: Rubio doesn’t have much experience and hasn’t been through the natural vetting process that comes with a long tenure in Washington or running in a national campaign. “As Cain reminded us, having been vetted by a campaign is a lot different than five guys asking you questions and Googl[ing] you a lot,” Republican poobah Grover Norquist told me. The other problem is that Rubio has emphatically said he is not going to be the V.P. nominee; but maybe he protests too much?
SUSANA MARTINEZ
Pros: The biggest surprise from my conversations was that Martinez’s name came up almost as often as Rubio’s. The first-term governor of New Mexico is not well-known nationally, but she too seems popular with different factions of the party. Moreover, she could help make inroads with the Latino vote in nearby Colorado and Nevada, and would give Romney a better shot at carrying New Mexico.
Cons: Like Rubio, Martinez is untested on the national stage. One longtime GOP strategist thinks Romney would be wise not to choose lesser-known candidates. “I think the Palin disaster was such an epic failure,” he told me. “I think, if you are Romney, you are going to want to have a very well-vetted steady hand, and I don’t think a first-term governor or senator fits the bill on that.”
CHRIS CHRISTIE
Pros: After so many Republicans begged him to get into the presidential race, it should come as no surprise that the tough-talking, first-term New Jersey governor was mentioned a lot during my conversations. Christie’s brash persona could be the perfect counterbalance for Romney’s perceived lack of charisma.
Cons: New Jersey is a blue state that Republicans don’t expect to win. Plus, Christie—who supports civil unions and gun control—might not be right-wing enough to satisfy the base. “Conservatives do not see Christie as a conservative,” veteran activist Richard Viguerie told me.
ROB PORTMAN
Pros: The freshman senator from Ohio is a favorite among establishment conservatives. He served as a congressman from 1993 to 2005, then became U.S. trade representative. He also ran George W. Bush’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a while. Portman satisfies many of the criteria one would want in a vice president: He has enough experience to credibly argue that he’s qualified to be president, and he has been in politics long enough that he’s unlikely to have any skeletons. He also happens to come from Ohio, a swing state that Republicans need to win.
Cons: Portman might be too similar to Romney. Both are staid establishment figures with long histories in mainstream Republican politics. As Steve Grand, a media strategist who has done work for the conservative group American Crossroads, told me, “There is a bit of a Bobbsey twin effect with the two of them together.”
JOHN THUNE
Pros: Thune, a senator from South Dakota, is popular with social conservatives. It was once thought he might run for president himself, so he is a known quantity and is unlikely to cause any controversy. He endorsed Romney early and campaigned for him in Iowa.
Cons: Thune is basically Portman minus the connection to a swing state. Also, he and Romney look like exactly the same person. (Maybe when he campaigned in Iowa, voters thought he was Romney.)
BOB MCDONNELL
Pros: The governor of Virginia was another choice I was surprised to hear. He received fewer mentions during my conversations than the people listed above, but was praised by some key players like Fred Malek, a big fund-raiser for the Republican Governors Association. McDonnell’s most appealing attribute may be his home state: Virginia was one of the places Barack Obama turned blue in 2008, and Republicans are eager to get it back. McDonnell would also play well among social conservatives.
Cons: When he was 34, McDonnell wrote a graduate thesis laying out a radically social-conservative vision. (He wrote that working women were “detrimental to the family,” among other offensive things.) During his campaign for governor, McDonnell walked back his statements, but they could resurface to haunt him.
NIKKI HALEY
Pros: The first-term governor of South Carolina was not a top choice for many, but she made it onto a few people’s longer lists. As an Indian-American woman, she would add some diversity, and she is also liked by the Tea Party crowd. (Brendan Steinhauser, federal and state campaigns director at FreedomWorks—one of the major pro-Tea Party groups—puts her near the top of his list.)
Cons: South Carolina is not one of the states in play, and Haley was plagued by accusations of infidelity when she ran for governor.
BRIAN SANDOVAL
Pros: Sandoval is the first-term governor of Nevada, and, like Rubio and Martinez, he is Latino. His presence on a couple of lists seemed as good an indication as any that many Republicans remain determined to win the Latino vote—despite the nasty tone Romney has taken toward immigrants during the primary. “I have it on good authority that Romney is perfectly capable of shifting, and, to a certain extent, people quite correctly understand that things get said in primaries that is not how people govern,” Norquist told me.
Cons: As with Martinez, McDonnell, and Haley, Sandoval’s odds of getting the nomination are haunted by the specter of someone else who was, not so long ago, a relatively unknown first-term governor: Sarah Palin. Speaking generally about the race and not about a specific candidate, Ed Rogers suggested that, if Romney does select someone with limited national experience, he could go about it differently than John McCain. “Without embarrassing anybody or having a gong show, it would be good to show a little leg and trot some people out and let there be a time of coy speculation,” he said. The McCain campaign, he noted, “didn’t do it with Sarah Palin. She just showed up.”
MITCH DANIELS
Pros: The second-term Indiana governor broke a lot of Republican hearts when he decided not to run for president this year. Only a couple of the people I spoke to put Daniels on their list, perhaps out of wishful thinking. Daniels has impressive experience in the public sector—as a two-term governor and former OMB director—plus private-sector experience as an executive at Eli Lilly.
Cons: It was widely said that Daniels decided not to run because he wanted to shield his wife and four daughters from national scrutiny. It seems unlikely he’d change his mind about that for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.
Eliza Gray is an assistant editor at The New Republic. This piece appeared in the February 2, 2012, issue of the magazine.
24 comments
Gray gets it right not to include Haley Barbour on the list, not with all those pardoned murderers walking around. I'd bet on Rubio. But I don't know why. I've resided in Florida all of my life and cannot understand the ascendance of Rubio, Scott, and the other new conservatives. I was working for the Florida Senate when Dempsey Barron single-handedly ended Florida's brief flirtation with progressivism by defeating Governor Askew's nominee to head the massive HRS. It was wonderful theater, an all night session with Barron's and Askew's operators going back and forth between Barron's office and Askew's office a floor above that ended when the nominee came to Barron's office to surrender. Dempsey Barron, now he was a conservative, tall, lean, red hair and ruddy complexion, who wore cowboy boots, not for show but because he actually lived on a ranch. To say the man had an intimidating stare would be like saying Tony Bennett can sing. I was scared to death of the guy. But he was for real, and the contest between Barron and Askew was one for the ages. Rubio? He's no Dempsey Barron.
- rayward
January 12, 2012 at 9:17am
Don't forget Bob McDonnell and the Confederate History Month debacle. That's not something that any Republican Presidential campaign would want to re-visit.
- wildboy
January 12, 2012 at 10:37am
All I know is, if it isn't Rubio I owe somebody on here a bottle of 12 year old scotch.
- Tristan
January 12, 2012 at 10:42am
Tristan, tell ya what: I'll bet you a bottle of 12 year old scotch (Lagavulin preferred) that it won't be Rubio, thus canceling your potential debt. My money's on McDonnell.
- RJSampson1
January 12, 2012 at 11:10am
Hmm. Pat Robertson disciple (law degree from Regent University), hates working women , the Confederate History Month imbroglio, and a newly Democrat-free legislature that's about to start sending him all sorts of dog-whistle legislation he can't avoid anymore. If I'm a Democratic strategist the McDonnell script virtually writes itself. So everybody's ruling out a marriage of convenience with one of the current candidates?
- cspencef
January 12, 2012 at 11:25am
Well that would actually double down my bet - my money (err, whiskey) is on Rubio - but you're on, RJ. And that's a fine single malt you prefer, if I do say so. I'm thinking I should have arranged counter wagers betting on Nikki Haley. Those silly infidelity charges never went anywhere, and she endorsed Romney after all. Hmm.
- Tristan
January 12, 2012 at 11:33am
My money is on Hillary Clinton. She helps Mitt win women, and can make significant inroads with voters who think Obama is too liberal, as well as those who think he's too conservative. Hello Win-Win! Of course, if Hillary leaves State, Obama's obvious move is to replace her with Ron Paul. Now, Obama's got the hardcore racist vote, which has given him difficulties in the past, sewn up, and the peaceniks too.
- GeoffG
January 12, 2012 at 1:00pm
Geoff - really, Paul? Not sure about that. Near as I can tell there are more crazy people in the US than there are racists. I think the clear choice for Obama is Bachmann, not Paul. And thanks to Revelations, she already knows what's going to happen in the near future in all the really important places outside our borders.
- Tristan
January 12, 2012 at 1:10pm
Unlike Dempsey, Rubio is not a real person, he was created in the laboratory, an invented person, a Manchurian candidate, whose family history, his only qualification for office, was invented, someone who has never been gainfully employed, other than as a politician, definitely not a job creator. I would think Romney would pick somebody that doesn't embody his own weakness as a candidate. It may work in Florida (after all, the sitting governor reinvented himself, from the thief of hundreds of millions of government funds to promotor of government austerity), but will it work in the real world? Dempsey would be appalled that Rubio and Scott are today's "conservatives".
- rayward
January 12, 2012 at 1:16pm
Huntsman. Pros: Romney is strong domestically. Huntsman is strong on foreign affairs. Their language skills complement each other. Romney can tell off the Québécois as well as Sakkozy in French; Huntsman can put Hu Jintao in his place in Chinese and probably can get through to the Taiwanese as well, just in case. (My cousin, though of Eastern European Jewish ancestry, was a Taiwanese millionaire and functioned well on the mainland where her factory was located). As the United States is no longer the leading country in the world (though we can still probably do the best job of blowing the world up), it now behooves us for our leaders to be multi-lingual, in between trying to convert them all to be Mormons. They both seem to be good family men, so the skeletons ma not be rattling too loudly in the closet. Cons: Both Romney and Huntsman belong to the same not quite fully matured cult and they both live in the same state. But the Mormons and Utah are taking over the United States anyway, so we might as well cut to the chase and move Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City.
- skahn
January 12, 2012 at 1:27pm
GeoffG, you are poaching on my territory -- posting silly, off the wall, outrageous comments. Don't you want anyone to take you seriously? After all, don't we want the rest of the world to take us seriously?
- skahn
January 12, 2012 at 1:29pm
Skahn, Are you sure Romney and Huntsman aren't actually the same guy -- except that Huntsman is Romney 15 years ago after taking a couple of surreptitious bong hits in his basement, thereby losing some of the awkwardness?
- wildboy
January 12, 2012 at 1:56pm
Presumably McCain didn't pick Palin because he wanted to be sure of Alaska. I'm curious as to what proportion of candidates pick a running mate on ideological grounds versus what proportion pick one for tactical reasons (including securing a state). And, just to add this tidbit: Stephen Colbert is now leading Jon Huntsman in South Carolina!
- ironyroad
January 12, 2012 at 2:28pm
Above: Seldom for Republicans at least. Not Pailin as you point out. Not Cheney. Not Kemp or Quayle or Bush or Dole. Agnew? no they didn't carry Maryland with him in 68. Bill Miller! Lodge? I would say one of the causes of the weakness of the current Presidential field is the lack of presentable VP choices from the recent past. Hard to believe that Dangerous Dan is the same age as Romney. When was the last time he was mentioned for higher office. Also note the absence of sitting senators in the current field. I really can't think of any who would be plausible.
- stanmvp48
January 12, 2012 at 3:18pm
Above: I've been somewhat taken by the analogy that came up with Biden: Are you picking a July Veep (Big Splash), October Veep (Good Campaigner), or January Veep (Capable Hand for Governing)? Throw in, of course, the usual balance ideas, and you can figure out what ideological or strategic grounds they pick. Often times the balance pick can be both ideological and strategic, depending on what the "balance" is. 2008: Biden: October and January Veep, Balance in terms of experience. Palin: July Veep, Ideological Balance 2004: Edwards: October Veep, Balance in terms of geography, populism 2000: Lieberman: July Veep, No real balance consideration Cheney: January Veep, Balance in terms of Washington / FP experience 1996: Kemp: Ideological Balance with the Supply Siders. Not sure he checked any month, really 1992: Gore: July and January Veep. Great pick because he checked balance marks (Washington / Foreign Policy Experience) while simultaneously doubling down on Clinton message (Southern, Moderate, Young) 1988: Bentsen: January Veep, Balance in terms of Geography, Ideology, Washington Experience Quayle: No Marks, Balance in terms of ideology, helping Conservative flank 1984: Mondale: July Veep 1980: Bush: January Veep, Balance in terms of Ideology (Rockefeller Republican) and Washington / Foreign Policy Experience
- Crock1701
January 12, 2012 at 3:33pm
To build on what I just said, plenty of times there are electoral reasons to pick a Veep that go beyond the home state. Picking someone like Palin was also to shore up McCain with the religious right he needed in the South and other states outside of Alaska. Biden helped Obama shore up support in the Rust Belt. Plenty of Republicans who were doubted by the far right picked someone from there to make sure they locked down the states where high turnout from those voters could make a difference. (See McCain-Palin, Bush-Quayle, and Ford-Dole) Plenty of the partnerships over the years of the Democratic North-South Axis were alsodesigned to shore up each region without necessarily taking an individual home state. (Kerry-Edwards, Dukakis-Bentsen, Carter-Mondale, Johnson-Humphrey, Kennedy-Johnson, Stevenson-Sparkman/Kefauver, Roosevelt-Garner/Truman...) I don't think any of them specifically picked a VP to win one state, but certainly there were electoral strategies behind them.
- Crock1701
January 12, 2012 at 3:40pm
With respect to Kemp am I the only one who was astonished at his general performance and specifically the Veep debate? Even George Will said he was "almost incoherent" . He then pointed out that the 2000 GOP Presidential campaign was wide open-meaning that if the 96 Veep candidate had made a decent presentation, he would be a presumptive contender in 2000. The road would not have been wide open for W.
- stanmvp48
January 12, 2012 at 3:42pm
Wildboy, I am not sure that Romney and Huntsman are not the same guy. Your thought branches off into various alternative realty twigs: 1) Does this put an entire new slant on "evil [or as the case may be] identical twin brother? 2) Do they come from some alternative reality where human cloning is not only legal [well, maybe] and has been developed to a high degree. 3) Perhaps all Mormons are identical pod people, and Romney and Huntsman just happened to be "podder" than the usual crop of pods.
- skahn
January 12, 2012 at 4:28pm
meant to say, "Or as the case may be GOOD twin brother." Also let me add that during the inauguration of Romney and Huntsman, one of them emerges (a la the ALIEN movies) from the body of the other, before they declare us now the United States of Utah.
- skahn
January 12, 2012 at 4:30pm
I'd expect Kay Bailey Hutchison to be on the short-list if not the final pick.
- m.hancock
January 12, 2012 at 4:53pm
She is pro choice isn't she?
- stanmvp48
January 12, 2012 at 9:17pm
If he wants to win, assuming Mitt continues to court his right wing, he picks a moderate Republican as VP.... Oops, forgot, there are no living specimens available.
- cf1125
January 12, 2012 at 11:42pm
He may not pick a raving right winger, but he will pick someone that raving right wingers can get excited about, because they will never be excited about Romney.
- JEFF FREY
January 13, 2012 at 12:14am
As someone who wants Obama to win, I'm most concerned about Susana Martinez. She brings the advantages of being a Latino in a region that will be contested, and of being a DC outsider not insider. Plus her being a woman and a fresh face could galvanize some support for Romney from independents, soccer moms, women more generally, etc. The big caveat here, of course, is her being an unknown quantity. Plus Romney errs on the side of caution as a campaigner, which is part of his effectiveness. I'm not convinced by the precedent of Palin disqualifying Martinez or other new faces. She was a uniquely bad and unqualified choice, made in haste. Romney's folks would vet any potential running mate much more thoroughly than McCain did. While Rubio brings a big asset to the table by virtue of nailing down Florida for Romney, it's a leap to assume that a Cuban-American whose been very tough on immigration issues will reap support from other Latinos.
- Thunderroad
January 13, 2012 at 2:19pm