Tim Kaine (right) is widely considered a leading candidate to become Hillary Clinton's running mate. | Getty Clinton VP hopefuls face public rejection Past candidates kept their shortlists secret to protect also-rans’ identities. The Clinton campaign took a different route.

For aspiring vice presidents, there are perks to being a part of Hillary Clinton’s extremely public process for vetting potential running mates. You get to travel with the candidate, you get to raise your profile and you get to watch the whole political world find out that you’ve been deemed worthy of consideration for the Democratic party’s top ticket.

Of course, for all but one of the shortlisted, it will also mean the world knew you were considered — and ultimately fell short.


The public rejection, and subsequent bump squarely out of the national spotlight, is a tough pill to swallow, as a number of Republican hopefuls discovered last week when Donald Trump passed them over. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reportedly pleaded his case up until the bitter end and was livid when Trump passed him over. Gingrich praised Mike Pence, Trump’s eventual selection, but he also let it be known that Trump’s VP vetting team had requested a decade’s worth of tax returns — an unflattering revelation for a candidate who has kept his own tax records private.

Now, with Clinton on the cusp of announcing her decision, her running mate contenders will get their turn at handling public rejection — gracefully or otherwise.

The campaign’s process had been anything but secretive. Clinton has done rallies with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose vetting was widely reported, and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, whom many Democrats consider the leading contender. Labor Secretary Tom Perez has done interviews on the Sunday shows, and Clinton has had reported meetings with Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Juliån Castro. Sources close to Clinton also let slip that the campaign was vetting retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis. More recently, close associates talked up Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The campaign's approach may have been a concession to realities of the social media age — where successfully keeping the list secret would have been unlikely if not impossible — and to a Republican rival who has exploited his own process for maximum news coverage. Faced with the unlikelihood of maintaining confidentiality, the Clinton campaign has tested the advantages of a more proactive media strategy, using leaks as diversions and trial balloons.

"They made a decision early on that they weren't going to publicize their list, but they weren't going to hide it either," said Bob Shrum, who ran Al Gore's and John Kerry's presidential campaigns. "In the world we live in, that's probably a sound decision."

The lawyer in charge of Clinton's vetting process, James Hamilton of the firm Morgan Lewis, did the same for Gore and Kerry. He didn't answer requests for comment. The campaign didn't either.

"Now I don’t know that you could ever get away with the super cloak and dagger, which maybe is why now these candidates are leaning into their process more publicly," Alyssa Mastromonaco, the Obama aide charged with keeping the process under wraps, told fellow former staffers Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer on a recent podcast. (She didn't respond to a request for comment.) "It's so the opposite of what JK and POTUS would have wanted, but then again, if this were us, I don't know that we would have had a choice."

Campaigns have long leaked names to test the public and media reception. Opponents also sometimes leak negative stories about likely candidates to send campaigns a warning shot, said Anita Dunn, the former Obama White House communications director now with public affairs firm SKDKnickerbocker.

"The dance leading up to this is one where sometimes camps want to test the reaction," she said.

But past presidential contenders have gone a different route, including then-presidential candidates Barack Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004.

In 2000, the Gore campaign leaked that Kerry was one of the finalists, after going through the ordeal of vetting that included answering questions about his sex life and his wife’s money. Kerry was so expectant that he began drafting an acceptance speech, The Boston Globe later reported, and the press staked out his house (while Kerry was in mourning for his father), but Kerry found out that Gore went with Sen. Joe Lieberman from watching the news on TV.

Gore's eventual pick, Sen. Joe Lieberman, recalled in a memoir that the process consisted of eight people poring over his financial records and every word he ever wrote, back to college newspaper editorials. They asked his ex-wife if she ever suspected him of having an affair.

Kerry's disappointment at being passed over made him intent on keeping his own process clandestine four years later. Obama continued that pattern in 2008, flying candidates to out-of-the-way airports (to elude plane-spotting reporters), and instructing them to wear baseball caps, sunglasses and casual clothes to avoid recognition.