Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has left the choice to select his running mate to two of his longtime friends and two other key backers according to his Democratic presidential campaign squad on Thursday morning.
Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), and longtime Biden aide Cynthia Hogan will serve as co-chairs of a vice-presidential selection committee.
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Former Sen. Chris Dodd served for decades in the Senate with Biden and is currently seen as one of his closest friends in the upper chamber. He’s served as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America and is now working at the law and lobbying firm Arnold & Porter.
While Cynthia Hogan was the top staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden was chair and was his top legal aide in the vice president’s office during the Obama administration.
Blunt Rochester and Garcetti are his news friends. Blunt Rochester, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Delaware, endorsed Biden on the first day of his presidential bid while Garcetti endorsed Biden in January this year.
“Selecting a vice president candidate is one of the most important decisions in a presidential campaign, and no one knows this more than Joe Biden,” Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement.
“These four co-chairs reflect the strength and diversity of our party, and will provide tremendous insight and expertise to what will be a rigorous selection and vetting process.”
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Biden has already pledged to select a female running mate. Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams are considered as the leading candidates for the position.
It’s assumed that none of the candidates has close ties to the selection committee, even though Garcetti and Harris share a home state, and Dodd’s and Klobuchar’s Senate tenures overlapped.
