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Activists say such a pick would excite disenchanted
African-American voters and demonstrate to a crucial part of the
Democratic base that Biden is committed to criminal justice
reform following the death of George Floyd, who was black, in
Minneapolis last week at the hands of a white police officer.
Biden has said Demings, 63, a former police chief of Orlando, is
on his short list. On Monday, he praised the leadership of
Bottoms, 50, during the unrest that has swept her Georgia city
and the country at large. Both women are from politically
important states.
"I've watched you like millions and millions of Americans have
on television of late. Your passion, your composure, your
balance, has been really incredible," Biden said during a
roundtable with mayors, including Bottoms.
Bottoms fired two officers over the weekend for excessive use of
force on protesters in Atlanta. She has criticized U.S.
President Donald Trump's response to the violence, saying his
comments only make the situation worse.
She also urged protesters to go home and not tear apart the city
where she was born, saying the "chaos" was not in the spirit of
the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and was
obscuring the message of peaceful protesters.
"You are disgracing our city. You are disgracing the life of
George Floyd and every other person who has been killed in this
country," she said during a Friday briefing widely viewed around
the country.
Bottoms is one of Biden's strongest backers in Georgia, having
endorsed the former vice president in June 2019, early in the
Democratic primary. She was a lawyer and judge before becoming
mayor in 2017.
In an NPR interview in April, she said she would welcome a place
on the Democratic ticket.
"I want Vice President Biden to choose the person who he thinks
will help him best beat Donald Trump in November, and so if it's
me, I would be honored," she said. "But if it's a green Martian
that helps him get over the finish line, then I think that's who
he needs to go with."
Demings, elected in 2016 as a congresswoman in Florida, has been
touted high on the short list despite having only endorsed Biden
in March.
She was one of the managers of the House of Representatives
impeachment proceedings against Trump but has had a lower
profile among voters nationally.
In an interview with Reuters on Sunday, Demings called Trump
"incapable of rising to an occasion like this."
"He's always looking for something else or somebody else to
blame," she said, echoing sentiments she made in national
television appearances in recent days. "He is just not capable
of unifying us, bringing us together."
Demings previously served as the first female police chief in
Orlando, during which time the department faced criticism for
excessive use of force.
On Friday, as protests over police tactics toward African
Americans flared across the country, Demings questioned the
actions of her "brothers and sisters in blue" in an editorial in
the Washington Post and called for "full and swift
accountability".
"As law enforcement officers, we took an oath to protect and
serve," she wrote. "And those who forgot — or who never
understood that oath in the first place — must go."
(Reporting by Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Trevor
Hunnicutt; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)
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