U.S. Rep. Val Demings has backed Biden for president, but could Biden pick her as his running mate in return?
U.S. Rep. Val Demings, of Orlando, has endorsed Joe Biden for president. Could Biden pick her as his running mate?
Florida, despite its electoral importance, has never produced a running mate for a major party presidential ticket.
But with razor-thin margins in seemingly every major statewide election, the temptation to swing the state with a homegrown favorite could prove hard to resist.
Demings, a former Orlando police chief, had been touted as a potential vicepresidential pick for Biden even before her profile enhancing turn as a House impeachment manager in President Trump’s Senate trial.
A New York Times story on Monday reported that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was “focused on the idea of nominating an AfricanAmerican woman for vice president, mulling names like Senator Kamala Harris, of California, Stacey Abrams, of Georgia, and Representative Val Demings, of Florida.”
On Thursday, Demings said in an interview with CNN that she was “humbled” that her name has been raised.
And she did not rule out the possibility if Biden were to ask.
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, said Demings “is a viable option” for Biden, who leads the Democratic primary race over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders as California continues to count its votes.
“On the one hand, she doesn’t have much political experience as some vicepresidential [possibilities],” Jewett said.
Harris, for one, has served as a U.S. senator and California attorney general before launching a run for president.
Abrams served as Democratic minority leader of the Georgia state House.
“But [Demings] has an excellent track record of accomplishments throughout her career,” Jewett said. “She’s a pathbreaker.”
Demings, who turns 63 on March 12, has three decades of experience with the Orlando Police Department and served as its first female chief.
Since her election to Congress in 2016, Demings has served on the key Judiciary
and Intelligence committees in addition to her selection as one of seven impeachment managers.
“Many times, vice presidents bring balance to a ticket,” Jewett said. “Sometimes its racial or ethnic balance, sometimes its gender balance, sometimes it’s ideological.”
President Donald Trump, for example, selected Vice President Mike Pence to shore up his conservative bona fides. Biden brought decades of Washington experience to the more youthful Barack
Obama’s ticket, as did Dick Cheney for George W. Bush.
Yet, since Lyndon Johnson was credited with winning Texas for John F. Kennedy in 1960, running mates haven’t helped that much. Either they were from states the candidate would have won anyway, like Biden’s Delaware or Cheney’s Wyoming, or they failed to win their swing states, like Texan Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 or North Carolina’s John Edwards in 2004.
However, Florida U.S.
Sen. Bob Graham was considered as a potential running mate for both Bill Clinton in 1992 and Al Gore in 2000 as a way of winning the state’s electoral votes.
“If I were directing the Al Gore campaign, number one on my list would be Bob Graham,” Washington pollster Bob Schroth said at the time.
“He would be a brilliant choice.”
But Gore chose Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, and Gore infamously lost Florida — and the election — by 537 votes.
Gov. Charlie Crist was mentioned as a potential vice president for Republican John McCain in 2008, Jewett said, “believe it or not.”
Crist later left the party, ran for governor as a Democrat in 2014 and now serves in Congress as a Democrat.
This year, in addition to Demings, former Tallahassee mayor and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum had been talked about as a potential running mate for Sanders, who campaigned for Gillum in Central Florida in 2018.
But on Thursday, Gillum told CNN’s David Axelrod that Sanders’ praise of Fidel Castro would spur a Biden “runaway” in the March 17 primary. “Those comments will live [on] for a lot of people.”