WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump will soon accept the Republican nomination for president, but who Trump will pick as his running mate remains a secret.
“In 2016, Donald Trump picked Mike Pence three days before the convention,” said Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University. “John McCain picked Sarah Palin three days before the convention. In 2000, George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney six days before the convention.”
Lichtman said the last time a Republican revealed their VP pick during the convention was in 1988, when George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle. There’s a similar pattern on the Democratic side: Jimmy Carter’s choice of Walter Mondale in 1976 was the last time the Democrats’ nominee for president announced his running mate at the convention. So, Lichtman said not knowing Trump’s pick right now “is absolutely normal.”
Trump has several people in the mix for consideration, including a few who also live in Florida, like Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Byron Donalds.
The Constitution says two candidates from the same state cannot run as president and vice president, meaning Rubio would need to change his residency — something he is reportedly willing to do.
“Donald Trump would have to move back to New York, which might be quite humiliating for all the civil and criminal verdicts against him,” Lichtman said. “I’d find it a little hard for Marco Rubio to move, but I guess that's not impossible.”
Lichtman said there is something unique about Trump’s list of running mates.
“A lot of his possible picks, notably, for example, Marco Rubio, had been pretty severe critics of Donald Trump at one point in 2016, or after the January 6 insurrection. We've never really seen anything quite like that before,” Lichtman said.
“Senator Rubio represents, I think, the phenomenon that I described that a lot of sitting Republicans feel, even when they were critical of former President Trump, that they have to become supporters,” added Kathleen Dolan, a distinguished professor of political science at UW-Milwaukee.
Though we don't know who Trump will pick, Dolan said the list of so-called finalists, and those who are thought to have fallen into the second tier of consideration, “continues to show us that the Republican party is not interested or focused on diversity at all.”
“There is much less likely to be a woman as the VP nominee. There's much less likely to be a person of color,” she said. “If the VP pick ends up being another white man, that will show a different face, literally, right, of the party to the country than the Democrats will, but then the Republicans could have, right? I mean, they are a party that says very openly that they are not interested in DEI issues and diversity for diversity’s sake. And so it's pretty clear that they're not trying to choose candidates based on those considerations. But I think that is something that will get a little bit of attention if the nominee is certainly a white man.”
Trump says he knows who his VP will be but that he might wait to reveal his pick’s name at the Convention in Wisconsin. Political analysts said the waiting game can pay dividends by generating intrigue about the selection, drawing the interest of voters.
“It creates a story. It creates publicity. It keeps it in the news,” Lichtman said. “And it doesn't allow critics to go after the vice presidential pick in the weeks and months before the convention.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.