WASHINGTON — With less than 100 days until the presidential election, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is expected to name her pick for vice president as early as this week.

The pool of potential VP picks share some traits: They are largely white men from battleground or conservative-leaning states who can boast working across the aisle and bridging gaps with moderate voters. Many of these men appeared on a “White Dudes for Harris” call earlier this week that the campaign said raised millions.

The field is ever-narrowing. Early names floated, from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have made it clear they are sticking to their state offices but back a Harris presidency. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is reportedly weighing a Senate race instead, and withdrew his name from the running.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said last month that he doubts Harris would select him, but “if they do the polling and it turns out that they need a 49-year-old balding, gay, Jew from Boulder, Colo., they’ve got my number.”

Here are some of the names still in the running, and where they stand on health care issues.

Andy Beshear, Kentucky governor

The Kentucky governor and former attorney general won reelection last year after a first-term record of fighting GOP efforts to limit abortions and institute Medicaid work requirements.

In the first few weeks of Beshear’s first term, he canceled work requirements in Medicaid and promised to extend the program’s coverage of dental, vision and hearing services, which his administration eventually rolled out in 2023. Kentucky was also one of 11 states to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months in 2022.

Beshear came into office this term pledging that he would prioritize revisions to the state’s 15-week abortion ban to allow for exceptions in the case of rape and incest. The lawyer — and son of another Democratic Kentucky governor, Steve Beshear — originally vetoed the abortion ban but the state legislature’s GOP supermajority swiftly overrode him.

Beshear has opposed restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors but he’s been rebuffed by conservative Kentucky lawmakers and voters.

Despite the well-known Beshear name in Kentucky, Democrats have little hope of flipping the state in this election. Yet the governor has painted himself as a centrist Democrat willing to work across partisan lines, a message that could appeal to moderate voters.

“I know how to talk to people on both sides of the aisle — you have to in a state like Kentucky,” he told CNN recently. “When people wake up in the morning, the things they are worried about aren’t partisan. …[they’re] thinking about whether they can afford their next doctor’s appointment for their parents, their kids, or theirselves.”

Pete Buttigieg, Department of Transportation secretary

President Biden named Buttigieg his transportation secretary soon after he won the presidency, setting the former South Bend, Ill. mayor up to be one of the administration’s most prominent figures defending the president’s climate change priorities.

Yet Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020, has talked extensively about the health care reforms he would like to see in office. On the campaign trail, he shopped an approach dubbed “Medicare for All Who Want It,” in which the government would expand public insurance but not end the private insurance market. Buttigieg saw it at the time as a compromise between further-left candidates’ calls for universal public coverage and Biden’s relatively limited public option proposal.

Buttigieg also that year released a roughly $300 billion plan to boost mental health care and addiction services if he was elected president.

The former mayor has also been an advocate for transgender rights and a harsh critic of Trump’s LGBTQ+ policies, including an order to bar transgender people from military service. Republicans have made limiting transgender Americans’ access to health care a policy priority in their 2024 platform.

More recently, Buttigieg has made the media rounds endorsing Harris and blasting former President Trump for his stance on abortion limits.

“Let’s be very clear: He is proud of the fact that he demolished the national right to choose in this country,” he said on Fox News recently, adding that he does not believe Trump’s recent turnaround, vowing to keep abortion limits a states’ rights issue. “The Republican Party continues to be interested in a national abortion ban.”

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator

Kelly was elected to the Senate in 2020 in a special election following the death of Sen. John McCain, narrowly defeating Republican incumbent Martha McSally. At the time, Kelly painted himself as a centrist who was registered as an independent voter as recently as two years before the election campaign.

Yet during the campaign and in office, the former Navy Captain and astronaut has been a staunch advocate for lowering drug prices and protecting abortion rights. Kelly ran on empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices and has since taken significant credit for the “Kelly-shaped” Inflation Reduction Act, which included that law. He’s also backed more stringent gun laws. Kelly’s wife, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was seriously injured in a 2011 attempted assassination.

The Arizona senator has repeatedly blasted his state’s total abortion ban and the 15-week restriction that replaced it, and introduced legislation that would encode Roe’s protections in federal law. More recently, he’s warned that reproductive rights limits are curtailing the number of doctors willing to provide care in restrictive states.

“Abortion bans are not only restricting the rights of Arizonans—they’re also creating chaos for women and doctors,” Kelly said during a May advocacy event at the Capitol.

But Kelly has also worked across the aisle on top-priority issues for Arizona voters such as fentanyl trafficking and border control. He also opposes Medicare for All, putting him at odds with further-left Democrats.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania governor

Shapiro won the Pennsylvania state office in a landslide 2022 victory as he vowed to defend abortion rights and veto restrictions. He has previously backed using federal funds for the procedure and said this July that his administration would not defend a state law that prohibits Medicaid funds for abortion.

As Pennsylvania’s attorney general before becoming governor, Shapiro took the Trump administration to court on Covid-19 travel bans and efforts to narrow Affordable Care Act coverage requirements for contraception.

Shapiro last December also led a letter from six Democratic governors — many of whom were also floated as potential vice president picks — calling on the Biden-Harris administration to make insurers cover over-the-counter birth control with no cost to patients.

“I knew [Vice President Harris] when she was a courtroom prosecutor, and let me tell you something: she is tough as nails,” Shapiro said during a Monday rally in his native Montgomery Co., Penn. “ I watched her stand up for victims, stand up for those who’ve been harmed. Stand up and do what is right… every single fight she was in, she won for the people.”

Tim Walz, Minnesota governor

Walz, with his Midwestern, rural background and fiery rhetoric, is seen as a frontrunner for the VP slot. The former teacher and House representative has been a staunch defender of abortion rights, and in wake of Dobbs signed into law bills that codified abortion rights in the state constitution and made Minnesota a safe haven for patients traveling from states with more restrictions.

In March 2023, he signed an executive order protecting Minnesotans’ rights to gender-affirming care and also positioning the state to be a safe haven for transgender people facing restrictions in other states.

On health care costs, Walz’s administration implemented drug price transparency requirements and championed legislation that capped insulin prices for patients in emergency situations. This year, Minnesota reached a settlement with insulin maker Eli Lilly that would cap all their insulin prices in the state for at least five years.

But Walz has also faced criticism — and lawsuits — from Republicans over his use of emergency powers during the Covid-19 pandemic, including mask mandates and vaccine requirements for government employees.

The governor’s national profile has grown steadily since last year, when he took over as chair of the Democratic Governors Association, and soon became known for a brand of Midwestern plain talk on full display during the “White Dudes for Harris” call on Monday.

“How often in a hundred days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in a hundred days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come?” he said. “And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass, sent him on the road?”