Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., checks a lot of boxes as a prospective running mate, according to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
"She is one of a group of close to a dozen really qualified and talented women who are on the list," Biden told ABC's WFTV-9 in Orlando earlier this month. "She's a very competent, very capable person."
Demings, an African American woman, is almost most notable nationally for being one of the impeachment managers for the House Democrats this winter.
"When Val speaks, you get a lot of 'amens!'" Biden donor and bundler John Morgan told Politico. "She's dynamic, a tough act to follow. I try to speak before her, not after her, at events."
Demings was the first female police chief in Orlando and comes from humble beginnings that will resonate with working-class Americans, she said.
"My background in Florida is pretty humble, being brought up poor, black and female in the South and being told enough times what I couldn't do and what I couldn’t be, but I became a police chief and now a member of Congress," Demings told Politico. "The American Dream is alive and well if you work hard enough and you have enough people supporting you."
Demings, the only non-lawyer on the impeachment team, has the support of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
"She's brilliant, hard-working, professional and has a commanding presence," Schiff told Politico, while declining to favor any of the running mate candidates. "The Biden campaign sees the same thing that those of us in Congress who have worked with her see in her."
However, at 63 years old, Demings is still short on national political experience.
"Val checks a lot of boxes, and the more you put it all on paper, the more she starts to score at the top of the list, but the knock against her might be experience," a top Biden campaign consultant told Politico.
That fact points more to a choice like Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.; Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; or Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as Biden's running mate.
But none of those will deliver a battleground state victory in Florida like Demings could.
"Trump can't win re-election if he doesn't win Florida," longtime Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told Politico. "To win in Florida, you've got to win the I-4 Corridor. Having Val on the ticket would give Biden a lot better chance in Florida.
"Not that he can't win Florida without her, but I think Val would certainly energize the entire I-4 Corridor, would energize the entire African-American community to turn out, if nothing more than to turn out for her."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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