Former vice president Joe Biden announced during Sunday’s debate with Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that he would only pick a woman as his running mate.
“If I’m elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I commit that I will, in fact, pick a woman to be vice president,” Biden said during the CNN-Univision debate. “There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president.”
Sanders added that “in all likelihood” he would pick a woman to join his ticket.
“For me, it’s not just nominating a woman,” Sanders said. “It is making sure that we have a progressive woman, and there are progressive women out there, so my very strong tendency is to move in that direction.”
Biden’s announcement comes after a surge in momentum to regain front-runner’s status in the Democratic primary, and on the backs of endorsements from Senators Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) — both possible vice-presidential picks.
On the campaign trail, Biden said that his pick would “preferably” be “someone who was of color and/or a different gender,” but waited until Sunday to confirm he would choose a woman.
“I’m not making that commitment until I know that the person I’m dealing with I can completely and thoroughly trust as authentic and on the same page,” Biden said in August.
““You’ve got to have somebody you can turn to,” he continued. “. . . That’s what I most want in whomever I pick. They’ve got to be simpatico with what I stand for and with what I want to get done.”
Other names that have been floated include Stacey Abrams, the failed Georgia governor candidate, Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer — who said “all roads to the White House lead through my state” in endorsing Biden on March 5 — and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), whose bankruptcy plan Biden endorsed this past weekend, despite clashing over it in the Senate 15 years ago.