"'There are millions of people in the United States,'” she began. “‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe,'" write Martin and Burns in their new book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.”
According to the new book, Jill Biden was not too pleased to learn that her husband’s running mate would be Kamala Harris, the same woman who spoke critically of Biden’s issues with race. During a Democratic primary debate in July 2019, Harris criticized Biden’s opposition to school busing in the 1970s which she said helped integration.
Biden retorted that her remarks were a mischaracterization of his position, and that he “did not oppose busing in America,” but “busing ordered by the Department of Education.” Biden was, in fact, a major opponent of busing beyond the federal government’s role.
That attack was not forgotten by Jill Biden, who called Harris’ comments a “punch in the gut,” but Joe Biden’s campaign team saw Harris, who was a former attorney general of California, as a person with killer instincts in her political debates. She would later become an asset in defeating former President Donald Trump. Ron Klain, who Biden had directed to vet V.P. candidates, told him to choose Harris.
"Yes, Harris had attacked Biden more harshly than any other major candidate in the Democratic primaries. Yes, the Biden family had seen it as a smear and a betrayal. In Klain's assessment, that would work to Biden's advantage," the book writes. "Choosing Harris will show people that you are magnanimous and forgiving, Klain told Biden. It will show the country just what a unifying leader you can be."
Biden was not set on Harris, either, because she had a romantic relationship with Willie Brown, former Mayor of San Francisco, in 1994. Brown was twice the age of Harris at the time of the affair, though Brown was separated at the time and the relationship was not a secret. Biden saw the affair as distasteful and labeled it as “the kind of thing that should be off limits.”
Michelle Lujan Grisham, a lawyer and current governor of New Mexico, was also vetted to become VP considering that she had experience with state health management, which would have appealed to voters during the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grisham, however, called the vetting process “insane.”
The book, which is set to come out on May 3, revealed that one of Biden’s closest advisers said Harris was the “safest of choices that we had.”