What to know about the Trump veepstakes
Donald Trump will announce his running mate soon. We’ve known for a long time that he wasn’t likely to tap his former vice president, Mike Pence for the ticket. Something like January 6 will strain a political relationship (sort of). For a couple of weeks, a trio of fairly conventional Republicans, all men, have been understood as the main contenders for the second spot on the ticket. These include Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), J.D. Vance (R-OH), and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.
The politics of the vice presidency seem to be like a salt lick for terrible punditry and overblown causal claims. At the same time, there’s a lot we don’t know in a changing political environment. William Adler and I have been working on a project on the vice presidency and party politics for several years now (we’ve actually got a book contract and this thing might see the light of day someday). Our aim is to put the vice presidency – selection, election campaigns, performance in office – into the context of political parties, with particular attention to changing structures and coalitions. We’ve been fortunate to do some research on the topic for various conferences, and to read some excellent work by other scholars working on the topic. Based on that, here are a few of my thoughts about the Trump veepstakes.
Targeted appeals don’t work (as far as we know, which isn’t that far)
In a study published in 2020, Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko make a strong case that we’ve been getting demographic, ideological, and regional stories about VP candidates all wrong. They look at targeted appeals – based on ideological grouping, religion (using Catholic VP nominees specifically), gender (Sarah Palin) and region, and don’t find much evidence that selecting a nominee from a specific identity does much to help the ticket with that group. It suggests a real need to step away from some of the arguments that Rubio would help the ticket with Latino voters, or that a well-targeted selection would deliver a key swing state (both Florida and Ohio have mostly relinquished swing state status at this point). This piece about Latino voters and Rubio, for example, quotes someone who says they were already going to vote for Trump. Devine and Kopko offer a compelling logic: no one votes for the vice president.
But there’s so much we don’t know about VP targeted appeals because the range of candidates we’ve observed is so narrow. There have been only a handful of women, one person of color in the modern era, and not even that many Catholics! It’s hard to say how voters would react to a Cuban-American vice presidential candidate, because that would be a first. In the piece linked above, political scientist Bernard Fraga, who literally wrote the book on minority turnout, suggests that such a running mate might mobilize Latino voters. The demographic narrowness of presidential politics has been bad for social science.
Party dynamics matter
We also often talk about the running mate selection process as if it were entirely on the presidential candidate, or their campaign. But there’s some evidence that parties still weigh in and assert their priorities, and that the two parties have distinct veepstakes logics. One of the things that William and I have discovered is that Republicans tend to select running mates who pull the ticket to the right and Democrats tend to select running mates who … also pull the ticket to the right (or at least the center). This is consistent with what we know about party asymmetry and certainly helps explain why Trump seems to gravitate toward running mates with very strong conservative credentials.
Archival work also reveals that when activists, elected officials, and movement journalists talk amongst themselves about VP selection, they also emphasize issues and ideology – especially on the right. Ideological considerations, driven by these extended-party actors, were important for the selections of Bob Dole in 1976 and Jack Kemp (by Bob Dole) in 1996. These discussions weren’t about balancing, per se, but about the factional balance of power within the party and the candidates’ credibility on issues.
When it comes to party and ideology, Rubio, Vance, and Burgum could all be classified as very conservative, but their trajectories in the GOP are a bit different. Rubio ran as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, but has been a party darling since, including a seeming establishment favorite for president in 2016. We know how that ended. Vance is a former Marine, a new Senator and ultimately a creature of media, gaining national prominence when his book, Hillbilly Elegy, became an anointed Trumpism explainer after the 2016 election (and Vance was a critic of Trump, something we should expect to hear about endlessly if he joins the ticket). Burgum built his career as a businessman and ran for governor as a newcomer to politics.
In this sense, both Burgum and Vance more closely resemble Trump’s trajectory and could indicate something about the direction of Republican politics. Vance has also adopted a much more Trump-style political persona, aligning himself with what might euphemistically be described as populism and perhaps more accurately as a media-driven style rooted in cultural provocation. I’ve also suggested that it seems likely that Trump will pick someone who doesn’t have much of a national political reputation or base of their own, which makes Burgum seem like the most likely pick. Rubio and Vance are both very much part of a Trump-led Republican Party at this point. But both can point to national reputations that aren’t tied to Trump, especially to his 2024 candidacy.
Trump’s veepstakes seems to be part of his general election pivot
The speculation around these three candidates could be wrong, of course. Michael Flynn’s name popped up in the rumor mill, and there’s always a chance that Trump pulls a total wild card and picks someone like Mike Lindell. The Trump era has also blurred the line between party establishment and fringe, between conventional politics and outlandishness. Still, the veepstakes decisions have largely reflected a turn toward more traditional politicians with typical credentials and ideological profiles that fall within the GOP mainstream. If one of the candidates from the alleged short list is selected, we have a bit more evidence that the party is probably shaping the choice, and pushing Trump toward choices that will help him reconcile with different factions of the party – the ones less intent on the 2016 goals of blowing up old priorities and practices. But these choices also illustrate the effect Trump has had on the party and how it operates. Trump might select a nominee with a traditional resume as a way of reassuring skeptics and broadening his base. But that running mate’s new role will be to promote a Trumpist project, with ever little resistance inside the party tent.