(Reuters) - Joe Biden is facing fresh calls to choose a black woman for his running mate amid rising racial tensions after this week’s videotaped killing of an unarmed black man by a white Minneapolis police officer.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election, has promised to pick a woman. Several black candidates are on the short list, including Senator Kamala Harris, former Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams and Representative Val Demings.
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which has led to raging protests there and elsewhere, is the latest in a string of U. S. incidents involving unarmed black men, including the shooting of a jogger in Georgia in February and numerous high-profile police killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some African-American leaders and activists said a black woman on the ticket would help demonstrate to black voters, a crucial component of the Democratic base, that Biden is committed to addressing issues like criminal justice reform and police misconduct.
Several said choosing Senator Amy Klobuchar, a former White House rival also being vetted by Biden’s team, would have the opposite effect, however.
Klobuchar, a white moderate like Biden, previously served as the top prosecutor for the Minnesota county that includes Minneapolis, where Floyd died on Monday after a white officer knelt on his neck for several minutes as Floyd said he could not breathe. Some black advocates said on Friday that Klobuchar’s record on police misconduct was disqualifying.
“Amy Klobuchar is an absolute no-go,” said Keith Williams, the chairman of the Democratic Party Black Caucus in Michigan, a battleground state Biden hopes to win back after Trump’s 2016 victory there. “A black woman would give him an instant boost.”
Representative James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, told reporters that while he respected the senator and thought she w... (Read more)
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