Delegates to California’s Senator Bernie Sanders sent Joe Biden a list of three black female candidates they would like to see the presumed Democratic presidential candidate choose when he names his running mate.
Without making his list: Senator Kamala Harris, a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, who is believed to be on the former vice president’s short list.
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Instead, the letter included California Representatives Barbara Lee and Karen Bass, as well as former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, political adviser to Sanders during her two presidential offers and national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. It was signed by 145 of the 153 Sanders delegates who voted on the suggestion, according to a report by The San Francisco Chronicle.
Biden announced in March that he would name a career partner. Since the outbreak of national protests over racism caused by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police two months ago, Biden has been repeatedly urged to name an African-American woman as a candidate for the party’s vice presidency.
But Harris, who made his own bid last year for the Democratic presidential nomination, has long faced skepticism from some progressives about his long career as a prosecutor at the municipal and state level.
Biden is also reportedly considering Bass, who represents the 37th California Congressional District in Los Angeles and who chairs the Black Caucus of Congress. Neither Lee, co-founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus representing the 13th Congressional District anchored in Oakland, nor is Turner believed to be among the half-dozen finalists Biden and her team are investigating.
Sanders, the populist Senator from Vermont who was making his second straight bet in the White House, outscored Biden 34-27 percent in the March 3 presidential primary in California, with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the former mayor. New York City Mike Bloomberg, each with 13 percent. of the vote.
Just over half of the state’s 495 delegates were awarded to Sanders.
