The 2028 Democratic presidential primary campaign promises to be a far more cutthroat affair than the 2024 vintage, with voters getting an early sneak peek of things to come this week, thanks to a new book from Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
The memoir, which will be released on Jan. 27, lays bare the simmering feud between Shapiro, seen by many as a 2028 front-runner, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is mulling another run after being bested by President Donald Trump under unique circumstances in 2024.
Should both of them decide to run, Shapiro’s book makes clear there is no love lost between the two, as he airs the problems he had with her vetting process when she considered him as a running mate. She eventually opted for Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
“This is clearly Shapiro’s effort to weaken Harris before the presidential primary season begins,” Tim Blessings, political science professor at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner. He added that Shapiro is trying to “dictate the terms on which the contest between the two of them will be held” and that Harris now has to respond to Shapiro, not the other way around.
Blessings framed the situation unfolding between the two Democratic heavyweights as a boxing match.
“If you go back and look at the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire, Ali would rush across the ring the moment the bell rang and try to get Foreman to react to him and not the other way around,” he said. “That, I suspect, is what Shapiro is up to.”
He added that he thinks the governor is “fuming at Harris on a personal level” and that “he was treated cavalierly by Harris.”
On paper, Shapiro was the strongest contender who could have delivered the battleground state for Democrats, but his lack of chemistry with Harris and their competing political ambitions seemed to dissolve any chance of a partnership.
For Shapiro, setting the record straight now about what went wrong not only puts to rest rumors but also allows him to look forward to 2028. In her book, 107 Days, Harris gave an inside look at the 3 1/2-month sprint for the White House after then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Harris threw Shapiro, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), and Biden under the bus.
“Who hasn’t Kamala Harris gone after since she lost?” Jeff Burton, founding partner at Maven Advocacy, told the Washington Examiner. Burton, a former senior National Republican Congressional Committee official, said Harris has been “clearly grasping and picking fights to stay relevant in a party that seems to want to leave her behind.” Harris has claimed Biden’s decision to run for a second term was based on “recklessness.”
She blamed Newsom for not being there enough for her and essentially accused Shapiro of measuring the drapes in the White House before getting the gig. She called the popular Keystone State governor out for allegedly asking about featuring Pennsylvania artists in the vice presidential residence. She claimed he insisted on being in the room for every decision she might make as president and hijacked the conversation during her interview with him for the job.
He called her a liar and pushed back hard on her portrayal of him as “selfish, petty, and monomaniacally ambitious,” in an interview with the Atlantic, saying she was “trying to sell books and cover her ass.”
“I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies,” he continued.
Now that it is Shapiro’s turn to sell a book, he is sharing his side of the vetting process and revealing it was much uglier than previously reported.
Shapiro’s problems with Harris’s vetting
In Where We Keep the Light, the Jewish governor dished that members of Harris’s team were hyperfocused on his views on Israel and that their questions crossed the line. At one point, they asked if he had been working covertly for the Middle Eastern country.
“Had I been a double agent for Israel?” Shapiro wrote, describing his exasperation with the vetting team. “Was she kidding?”
He said he told Dana Remus, the former White House counsel who was doing the questioning, that it was an offensive question, and she answered that she needed to ask it.
Shapiro said the line of questioning then went from bad to worse. Remus allegedly asked the governor if he had ever spoken to an undercover Israeli agent, to which he responded, “If they were undercover, how the hell would I know?”
Shapiro was also asked if he would apologize for speaking out on antisemitism he saw taking place at the University of Pennsylvania. He said no.
Shapiro suggested the decision not to move forward with the vetting process went both ways and questioned whether he even wanted to be part of a process that would boot the sitting president out. He also claimed Harris’s team questioned whether he and his wife, Lori, could handle the financial burden of running for office, including spending thousands on a new wardrobe, hair, and makeup.
He reached out to his wife, who was at a Walmart in Canada, and she said it was not the right time for the family.
The ”right time,” though, could be right around the corner.
Shapiro announced earlier this month that he was running for reelection in Pennsylvania, but there is widespread speculation that he will run for the White House in 2028. Last week, his campaign office refused to answer questions from the Washington Examiner about whether he would serve a full second term if reelected as governor, sidestepping the question and insisting he is focused on improving the key swing state.
The nonanswer, coupled with his flashy book tour, will inevitably fuel the firestorm of speculation that he is eyeing up a White House bid — and gives rivals such as Harris fresh ammunition to question his commitment and motives. For Harris, slamming Shapiro may not be the smart way to go if she is trying to stage a comeback.
“Josh Shapiro is the sitting governor of a critical swing state, who will be easily reelected this year,” longtime political strategist Garry South told the Washington Examiner. “Harris is a former vice president who badly lost the last presidential election to Donald Trump, of all people. Polls show voters, even in her own state, don’t want her to run again in 2028. Their respective positions should give us a clue about which one to pay attention to.”
HARRIS CAMPAIGN ASKED JOSH SHAPIRO IF HE WAS AN ISRAELI AGENT, NEW MEMOIR REVEALS
Political strategist Adin Lenchner of Carroll Street Campaigns is also skeptical of a Harris win and said voters are not looking for just a familiar face, while Ashleigh Ewald, a Generation Z content creator for Harris’s 2024 campaign, told the Washington Examiner that younger voters may tune out all of the petty infighting.
“What I hear consistently from younger voters is a desire for forward-looking leadership,” she said. “While contrast has always been part of politics, there’s growing fatigue when messaging relies too heavily on criticism rather than clearly outlining solutions. Voters respond most to concrete, transparent proposals on issues like affordable healthcare, economic stability, and protecting rights in ways that don’t increase everyday costs.”