SAN FRANCISCO — Here's the thing about a vice presidential nomination. You're not supposed to look like you're pursuing it. It's considered best to lie low and let the job come to you.
So when Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack -- one of the top prospects to join Sen. John F. Kerry on the Democratic ticket -- came to San Francisco last week for a biotechnology conference, he relentlessly maintained just one identity, as governor of a small Midwestern state.
On the floor of the Moscone Convention Center, a Japanese trade representative yakked to Vilsack about his chances of making it to Washington. The governor's response: He couldn't wait to see the booths featuring Japanese biotech firms.
At a breakfast meeting, a reporter looked at the crowded room and said that people must have wanted to catch a glimpse of a vice presidential candidate.
"Oh," Vilsack quipped, "is Dick Cheney going to be here?"
And at a nighttime cocktail party for Iowa expatriates, the home folks were free to spin out Washington fantasies and Beltway dreams. The governor, however, aw-shucksed his way free of all the speculation.
"It's not about me," he told one woman. "It's about Iowa."
Thomas J. Vilsack holds the distinction of being perhaps the least known of the noncandidate-candidates being seriously scrutinized by the Kerry campaign as a potential vice presidential running mate.
Only Vilsack, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina are known to be on the Kerry short list -- subject to painstaking reviews of both their personal and political records.
So, why Vilsack?
Allies suggest he would be a bright and articulate spokesman for Democrats, a fresh face to inspire some media buzz but not so sparkling (like the glib and handsome Edwards) as to steal the limelight from Kerry.
He also has the sort of dramatic biography that television and newspaper reporters love: orphaned at birth, then adopted as an infant by a well-to-do Pittsburgh couple. He managed to transcend physical abuse by his alcoholic mother to build a successful career in law and politics.
"He has a great personal story -- a difficult childhood he overcame," said Lisette Lehman, a onetime Iowan who greeted Vilsack at the San Francisco cocktail party last week. "And being from the Midwest, that might be a nice balance with Kerry being from the East and from a different background."
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