Kamala Harris never got close enough in her first presidential run to seriously consider choosing her running mate.
But the working theory behind her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was floated more than five years ago. There was just a different running mate in mind — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown .
When Harris’ top aides at the time privately mused about the kind of partner they wanted to see on the ticket, they spoke about an avuncular, and at times rumpled white man with broad appeal across the industrial Midwest.
The ideal vice president would be someone with a proven record of winning battleground races yet also deeply credible with progressives and organized labor; someone who could lay the wood to Republicans, but also could connect with her West Coast credentials via their shared warmth and genuine banter; someone who was a bit older, perhaps, and comfortable playing her No. 2.
In these admittedly premature conversations from Harris’ camp five years ago, two advisers put a name behind some of the qualities: Brown.