Shapiro was set to endorse Harris for president in 2019. Will she want him on her ticket now?

When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president last week, it wasn’t the first time.

A little-known political fact of Harris’s first run for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 campaign cycle is that then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Shapiro offered his endorsement of Harris’s first presidential bid way back in 2019.

It didn’t really get anywhere at the time, in part, according to a source familiar with the campaigns’ discussions, because of differences within the Harris campaign over when to roll it out. And then, by early December of that year, Harris was out of the race.

Shapiro eventually joined with the Democratic Party establishment in a public endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden in mid-March 2020, after the field winnowed down to Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

But let the record show Shapiro, in that way, picked Harris for president nearly five years ago.

Beyond maybe winning you a bar bet some night, pennlive.com offers a story from politics past because it goes to show that when Shapiro touts Harris from the stump as someone he’s known for “nearly 20 years,” it’s more than election year puffery.

There is real connective tissue between the two, dating back to their 2006 selections to a 24-seat bipartisan seminar for rising political leaders sponsored by the non-profit Aspen Institute.

Harris’s next big decision as the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee is selecting a running mate. And Shapiro, as any politically sentient Pennsylvanian knows, is on her short list.

None of this to suggest Harris and Shapiro are the best of friends. Who knows, Harris may be closer to some of the other potential running mates a team led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is vetting.

And then, personal relationships may not be decisive in this particular hiring.

As veteran political consultant James Carville huffed about one such historic selection to PennLive last week: “You think JFK had a good personal chemistry with Lyndon Johnson? Maybe it’s good that you do… But it’s hardly necessary.”

However, Shapiro does have a more meaningful relationship with the vice president than, say, that smiling salesman coming up on you at the Toyota dealership.

Here’s a look at some of those Cal-to-Penn connections that may help Shapiro in this hunt.

Marked for the future

It started in 2006, when Harris, then the elected district attorney for San Francisco, and then-state Rep. Shapiro, a Democrat from Montgomery County, were selected for a bipartisan fellowship for rising political leaders sponsored by the Aspen Institute.

Started by former Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards in 2005, the program was designed to advance “cross-partisan civility and understanding” by bringing together 12 rising stars from both major political parties for off-record study and conversation, said former program director Kathleen Godfrey.

Selected for “being an emerging political leader with a reputation for intellect, thoughtfulness, and a commitment to civil dialogue,” class members were honored to be chosen, and delighted by the company they got to keep in extended, off-the-record settings.

“I was immediately struck by her,” Shapiro said of getting to know Harris in a brief, recent interview. “I thought she was just an extraordinary publicservant back then. We’ve stayed in touch over the years, and continued to support one another throughout our careers.”

The class met for three seminars over the course of two years, in Aspen, New Orleans, and then Aspen again.

Rallying the troops

November 2016, after Donald Trump’s electoral college victory over Hilary Rodham Clinton, was a particularly bleak moment for the Democratic Party nationally.

But not for everyone.

There were some Democrats who had the biggest wins of their political careers in that very election cycle.

This reporter and many others were invited by Shapiro’s political committee in the week after that election to listen in on a telephone call featuring President Barack Obama, newly-elected U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris from California, and Shapiro, the newly-elected Attorney General in Pennsylvania.

The message? That there will be brighter days ahead, and there are some new stars in the party to help dispirited Democrats get there. Shapiro, according to news reports on the call, got the job of introducing Obama.

It’s not exactly clear who organized the call, but it’s interesting that both Harris and Shapiro were on the bill.

There have been other, private calls along the way, over the years, Shapiro said Saturday.

“Mostly our conversations have been about issues that we were working on. How we were battling a particular issue … along with just checking in to see how we’re doing personally,” Shapiro said.

About that endorsement

In 2019, Harris was one of the many major contenders in a 2020 Democratic presidential field that included Biden, the former vice president; U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar; former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke and many, many more.

Shapiro could have chosen any of them for his swing-state blessing. He chose Harris.

Asked about that decision the other day, Shapiro referred the question to Harris’s campaign, but added “I’ve been a strong supporter of Kamala Harris for many years.”

In truth, the offered endorsement was never publicized, in part because of what some accounts have described as a long-running internal debate over whether Harris should embrace or downplay her record as a prosecutor in the face of attacks by some in the party’s progressive wing.

“He did endorse,” the source, who asked not to be identified because of his current position, said of Shapiro. “But they (the Harris campaign) never followed up appropriately… and then her campaign ended fairly quickly.”

Still, for the broader Harris/Shapiro relationship, having that kind of offer in one’s memory bank can’t hurt, right?

Old friends, new places

Since January 2021, Shapiro and Harris have shared multiple stages in Pennsylvania, she as vice president, he as both attorney general and governor.

According to a running count by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Harris has made 15 stops in Pennsylvania during her current term.

Many of those appearances have been with Shapiro, whether it was Pittsburgh in 2021 to tout expanded federal child tax credits; or Philadelphia in 2022 to make a campaign stop for then-gubernatorial candidate Shapiro and other Pennsylvania Democrats; or a 2023 stop in Philadelphia when she, with Biden, unveiled $500 million in federal funds for water service upgrades.

Sometimes, it’s been Shapiro going to Washington. This April, in simpler times, the Shapiros and Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff were all on the guest list for President Biden’s state dinner with the prime minister of Japan.

One of Harris’s top White House staffers, Erin Wilson, is a Philadelphia native who knows Shapiro well from her work in Philly-area and Pennsylvania politics during the Obama election cycles.

Shapiro has noted this month that he spoke with Harris — by telephone — on July 20, within hours of Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.

“The conversations I’ve had with the vice president are all about one thing and one thing only: ‘How do we defeat Donald Trump?’” Shapiro told reporters the next day.

“How do we protect our freedom, and how do we make Pennsylvania — which was the epicenter of the creation of our democracy 248 years ago and is going to be the epicenter of our politics today — how do we make sure that Pennsylvania elects Kamala Harris to be our next president?”

It was good for him, and Harris, that they weren’t talking for the first time that day.

But for both the vice president and the governor, it’s their next call that may be the most important.