In his forthcoming memoir, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who was a top contender to be former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 running mate, reveals a deeply contentious vetting process where Harris’s team intensely focused on his views on Israel, asking him at one point, “Had I been a double agent for Israel?” a question Shapiro wrote he found deeply offensive.
According to the book obtained by The New York Times, Shapiro, who is Jewish, wondered “whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running,” and wrote that the aggressive line of questioning “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”
While Shapiro acknowledged the sessions were “completely professional and businesslike,” he added, “But I just had a knot in my stomach through all of it.” In her own memoir, Harris alluded to concerns over Shapiro’s stance on Gaza but focused on a “nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two.”