There have been many rumors and suggestions about who Donald Trump should pick as his running mate for the general election later this year.
On Monday, one of his former senior advisers suggested that Trump — the presumptive GOP presidential nominee — should select a person of color as his vice president once he officially secures the nomination.
In an op-ed piece that was published in The New York Times, Kellyanne Conway wrote that Trump should focus his VP pick on someone who could not only help him win the upcoming election over President Joe Biden, but who could also help him govern during the second term.
Conway, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and also was a White House counselor during his administration, wrote:
“With a crisis on the border, economic dissatisfaction, fears about crime, a parents’ rights renaissance and multiple wars and threats across the globe, Mr. Trump’s deputy must be able to navigate chaos and challenges at home and abroad.”
She argued that his running mate has to have the ability to “mitigate the damage and turn the tables” on the abortion issue.
Since the landmark Roe v. Wade case was overturned by the Supreme Court in the summer of 2022, Democrats have won many key victories at the polls, and that’s something Republicans are going to have to grapple with in November.
Conway continued:
“Taking all of this into consideration, if I were advising Mr. Trump, I would suggest he choose a person of color as his running mate, depending on vetting of all possibilities and satisfaction of procedural issues like dual residency in Florida.
“Not for identity politics a la the Democrats, but as an equal helping to lead an America First movement that includes more union workers, independents, first-time voters, veterans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans.”
Conway was referring to the fact that Biden chose Kamala Harris to be his running mate in 2020, which many people said was solely done to attract the minority vote. If that is true, then it certainly worked.
Biden won election in large part because he was able to attract the minority vote, and those who aren’t directly aligned with either party.
That being said, things are a lot different four years later. Democrats have seemingly lost the automatic vote that they used to rely upon from minority groups, paving the way for Republicans to pounce.
In 2016, Conway advocated that Trump pick Mike Pence as his running mate, and he obviously did that.
In her op-ed this week, she mentioned six people who she believed would make good fits as Trump’s running mate this time around — South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, former Trump administration Cabinet official Ben Carson, former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Texas Representative Wesley Hunt.
Thus far, Trump hasn’t let much slip in terms of who he might be leaning toward in his VP pick, though he did say recently that he has already made up his mind about who he’s going to choose.
