The Quiet Bond Kamala Harris Forged With Three V.P. Contenders

When President Biden introduced Kamala Harris as his running mate four years ago, he shared their origin story: He had first learned of her, he said, through his son Beau, who served with her as a state attorney general.

“I know how much Beau respected Kamala and her work,” Mr. Biden said of his son, who died in 2015 and was Delaware’s attorney general when Ms. Harris held the same job in California. “That mattered a lot to me, to be honest with you, as I made this decision.”

Now it is Vice President Harris who is deciding on a running mate. And as she leans into her law enforcement background, with Democrats framing the race against former President Donald J. Trump as a choice between a prosecutor and a felon, the path to the Democratic ticket may again run through a class of ambitious former attorneys general who came up alongside her.

Of the five or six vice-presidential options currently seen as the most serious contenders, two of them — Governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Andy Beshear of Kentucky — directly overlapped with Ms. Harris as attorneys general. Now-Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania came into the job as she was leaving her post, and as Mr. Trump entered the White House.

Interviews with more than a dozen people who worked with Ms. Harris and those men at the time offer a window into her relationships with these possible running mates, and a snapshot of what each might bring — a steady, seasoned hand; political potency in an essential battleground state; or proven appeal in conservative territory. All would offer “balance” to the ticket along the lines of geography, ideology and executive experience.

These three men have also proved their ability to work in a way “that would benefit not only members of their party, but all of the residents in their states,” said Karl Racine, the former attorney general of Washington, D.C., who helped lead the Democratic Attorneys General Association during Ms. Harris’s tenure.