Why Kamala Harris should choose a Republican as her running mate

“Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” President Joe Biden told the nation last week, explaining his decision to exit the presidential race. “And that includes personal ambition.”

Biden deserves enormous praise for placing the fate of our country ahead of his own desires. But if Donald Trump represents an existential danger to democracy, as Democrats insist, they also need to put aside political partisanship. The best way to ensure Trump never darkens the door of the White House again is to put a never-Trumper on the ticket.

A Republican never-Trumper.

That’s what screenwriter Aaron Sorkin wrote on July 21, a few hours before Biden announced he would not seek reelection. Sorkin urged Democrats to nominate Mitt Romney for president, which would “peel off enough Republican votes” to beat Trump in November.

As Sorkin acknowledged, Democrats would have to hold their noses in backing a candidate who rejects abortion rights and many other parts of their platform. But the first task was to keep “a deranged man” — Trump — from returning to power. Everything else came second.

Sorkin quickly changed his tune after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor. “I take it all back,” Sorkin wrote. “Harris for America!”

But the same arguments he used for a Romney presidency apply to Harris’ vice presidential pick. Selecting a Republican for the ticket would remind voters that “we’re not red states and blue states but the United States,” as Sorkin wrote about Romney. And it would also show that Democrats “are putting the country before party in ways that the MAGA movement will not.”

Fortunately, there’s a deep bench of anti-MAGA Republicans for Harris to choose from. In an election that has focused so heavily on age, Romney is probably too old (77) to get the nod. My own choice would be former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who endorsed Biden for president last month and then praised him for stepping down.

“Here is the difference between a man who loves his country, and one who loves himself,” wrote Kinzinger, one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. “Trump cares about Trump only. And the GOP is too scared to do what the Dems did: tell the truth.”

Another GOP truth-teller who should receive consideration from Harris is former U.S. Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who served in Congress for 36 years. Unlike Kinzinger, Upton comes from a swing state. But at 71, he might be too old.

I understand why many Democrats would be reluctant to vote for any ticket with a Republican on it. But there’s something bigger at stake.

Ditto for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge: right state, wrong age (78). In an Inquirer op-ed endorsing Biden back in 2020, Ridge warned that Trump wouldn’t accept the outcome of the election if it went against him. Ridge was correct, of course. But most Republicans don’t have the guts to call out Trump about it.

Then there’s former U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who called Trump “a cancer for our country” before leaving Congress. Like Kinzinger and Upton, Gonzalez voted to impeach the president. He was censured by the Ohio Republican Party, which moved in lockstep behind Trump.

So did Gonzalez’s fellow Ohioan, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who once denounced Trump as a “moral disaster” — and compared him to Hitler — before becoming Trump’s echo chamber. By contrast, Gonzalez refused to parrot the MAGA lies about the 2020 election. It doesn’t hurt that he played football at Ohio State and later in the NFL.

I understand why many Democrats would be reluctant to vote for any ticket with a Republican on it. Vice presidents break ties in the Senate, and I wouldn’t want any of these GOP candidates doing that if, say, a bill banning abortion was on the table.

But there’s something bigger at stake here: democracy itself. If Congress passes a bad law, we can elect new representatives to enact a better one. But if we undermine our electoral system — like Trump has consistently done — we might never get it back.

That’s why Democrats “need to break the glass” with a bold and unprecedented move, as Sorkin wrote in his plea to make Romney their nominee. “It’s a grand gesture. A sacrifice,” Sorkin added.

Biden just made the biggest sacrifice, of course, by ending his reelection bid and passing the torch to Harris.

Now Harris needs to make her own sacrifice, by forsaking party loyalty and picking a running mate from the GOP. That would bring disaffected Republicans into her fold. And it just might preserve the republic, too.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books.