No one knows the importance of selecting the right running mate better than Vice President Kamala Harris. With Harris now the leading candidate to succeed President Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, here’s a look at the top contenders to be on the ticket.

Andy Beshear

The Kentucky governor secured his reputation as a rising party star by beating Donald Trump-endorsed candidates in a Republican stronghold.

Beshear displayed a disciplined, tenacious style in winning reelection last year by defeating then-Attorney General Daniel Cameron. The governor has urged Democrats to follow his winning formula by focusing on the everyday concerns of Americans, from good-paying jobs to quality education and health care.

Beshear, 46, supports abortion rights, but in Kentucky, he has tailored his message to push back against what he calls an extreme ban that lacks exceptions for rape and incest victims.

He won widespread praise for his empathy and attention to detail in guiding the Bluegrass State through the COVID-19 pandemic and leading the response to tornadoes and flooding that caused massive damage. He honed his speaking skills by holding regular news conferences that often last an hour or so.

Beshear has presided over record economic growth in Kentucky, and he typically begins his briefings by promoting the state’s latest economic wins. He frequently mentions his Christian faith and how it guides his policymaking.

A lawyer by trade, Beshear won election as state attorney general in 2015. He then unseated Trump-backed Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019.

Beshear entered politics with a strong pedigree as the son of two-term Gov. Steve Beshear, but has faced tougher political obstacles. Andy Beshear, unlike his father, has dealt with an entirely GOP-controlled Legislature and Republican lawmakers have stymied some of his priorities. One of them is state-funded preschool for every Kentucky 4-year-old.

Mark Kelly

The Arizona senator leveraged his career as an astronaut to build a brand as a moderate in a state that long supported Republicans.

In his two campaigns — the first in 2020 to finish the term of the late Republican Sen. John McCain and the second two years later for a full term — Kelly has earned more votes than any other Democrat on the ballot. He outpolled Biden, who narrowly won Arizona, by 2 percentage points in 2020.

Kelly’s first turn in the national political spotlight came through tragedy. His wife, then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson. The shooting left six people dead and spawned an early reckoning with political violence and partisan rancor.

Giffords’ survival made her a national inspiration but snuffed out a promising political career of her own. She and Kelly went on to found a gun-control advocacy group, and Giffords has been a powerful surrogate as Kelly has taken her place in politics.

In the Senate, Kelly has focused on national security and the military as well as the drought plaguing the U.S. West. He was instrumental in crafting the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill signed by Biden to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

Kelly was a Navy test pilot and flew 39 combat missions during the Gulf War before joining NASA, where he flew four missions on the space shuttle.

Originally from New Jersey, he settled with Giffords in Tucson after retiring from NASA and the Navy.

Unlike Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat two years before Kelly but later left the party to become an independent, Kelly has managed to retain the support of the party’s grassroots base without alienating independent voters.

Josh Shapiro

Shapiro is halfway through his second year as Pennsylvania’s governor after easily winning his last election by trouncing a far-right, Trump-endorsed candidate.

Shapiro, 51, has been a surrogate for Biden, backing the president in appearances on cable networks, and has years of experience making Trump the focus of his attacks, first as state attorney general and now as governor.

He has won three statewide races — two as attorney general, one as governor — with a tightly scripted, disciplined campaign style, offering voters something of a lower-key alternative to the state’s brash political star, Sen. John Fetterman.

As governor, Shapiro has begun to shed a buttoned-down public demeanor and become more confident and plain-spoken. In one recent MSNBC appearance, he said Trump should “quit whining” and stop “[expletive]— talking America.”

Shapiro, who is Jewish, has aggressively confronted what he viewed as antisemitism cropping up from pro-Palestinian demonstrations and has professed solidarity with Israel in its drive to eliminate Hamas.

He is a staunch proponent of abortion rights in Pennsylvania and routinely promotes his victories in court against Trump, including beating back challenges to the 2020 election results.

He also has positioned himself as a moderate on energy issues in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state and plays up the need for bipartisanship in the politically divided state government.

Tim Walz

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a military veteran and union supporter who helped enact an ambitious Democratic agenda for his state, including sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families.

Walz, 60, has taken on greater national visibility since a 2023 legislative session that he calls one of the most consequential and productive in state history. He was elected chair of the Democratic Governors Association in December. He has served often as a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris advocate, and has made increasingly frequent appearances on national television.

Walz won the first of six terms in Congress in 2006 from a mostly rural southern Minnesota district, and used the office to champion veterans’ issues. He served 24 years in the Army National Guard, rising to command sergeant major, one of the highest enlisted ranks in the military.

When first elected governor in 2018, Walz had to find ways to work with a Legislature that was split between a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-led Senate. Minnesota has a history of divided government, though, and the arrangement was surprisingly productive in his first year. But the COVID-19 pandemic hit Minnesota early in his second year, and bipartisan cooperation soon frayed.

Walz won reelection by nearly 8 points in 2022, and Democrats kept control of the House and flipped the Senate to win full control of both chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in eight years.

Walz and other Democrats went into the 2023 legislative session with an ambitious agenda — and a whopping $17.6 billion budget surplus to help fund it. Their proudest accomplishments included sweeping protections for abortion rights.

(AP)