Vice President Kamala Harris’ search for a running mate is quickly coming to a close, but Democrats remain divided over who should join her on the party ticket.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is widely considered to be the top contender, but she conducted interviews with a number of finalists on Sunday. Harris is scheduled to make her first appearance with her running mate at a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

The three contenders that Harris spoke to on Sunday were Shapiro, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.

Figures within the Democratic Party are deeply divided over who would be the best pick for Harris to help carry her momentum toward Election Day.

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Harris has already improved on President Biden’s position in polling, with most showing the race neck-and-neck, with Trump maintaining only a slight advantage.

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The campaign is expected to announce Harris’ running mate via an online message to supporters. Four years ago, Biden’s campaign announced Harris as his running mate via a text to supporters on Aug. 11, 2020.

Harris has already improved on President Biden’s position in polling, with most showing the race with Trump as very close.  (RYAN COLLERD/AFP via Getty Images)

The range of candidates shows Harris is conscious that she needs a running mate who will help her appeal to more moderate voters, given her far-left voting record in the Senate.

“I think she needs to pick someone who’s more moderate than her. I think she needs to pick someone that’s got more governing experience at the ground level,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on ABC News’ “This Week.”

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He argued Harris should pick up Shapiro, saying it is not a “hard choice.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a top contender to be Harris’ running mate in 2024. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti)

Shapiro would also offer a presumed advantage on Election Day, with Pennsylvania being a major swing state. Meanwhile, Walz’ Minnesota is more reliably blue.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., reportedly warned Harris against picking Shapiro. He reportedly argued that Shapiro is too focused on “his own personal ambitions.”

The pair had reportedly clashed over the years during their interactions in Pennsylvania state politics.

Reuters contributed to this report

She had me at “emotional support chickens.”

My friend Susan Kaufman was telling me about a yarn store in Inglewood where a multiracial, multigenerational crowd gathers twice a week to commune and knit. The store’s owner has created do-it-yourself knitting kits for overstuffed chickens with fanciful names like Baraaawk Obama, Hennifer Lopez and Paulina Poultryskova.

When you hug one of the chickens, Susan assured me, you would forget, at least for a moment, that a convicted felon, racist and fraudster might retake the White House in November.

“It sounds weird, but they really work,” said Susan, a therapist who knows about emotional support.

When she first invited me to tag along with her to the Knitting Tree, President Biden had not yet announced he was dropping out of the presidential race. Vice President Kamala Harris had not yet exploded into the national spotlight. And former President Trump was campaigning as if he had already won.

I needed some poultry therapy.

By the time I walked into the Knitting Tree a few weeks later, however, the depressing political landscape had seismically shifted, and so had the mood inside the store, said the store’s owner, Annette Corsino.

“Before this, the mood was pretty grim,” said Corsino, 62, whose lavender curls and plethora of tattoos telegraph the ascendance of a hipper knitting generation. “But people are feeling much better now. They’re smiling more. There’s hope.”

I hugged Baraaawk Obama to my chest. It felt good, really good.

Corsino nodded approvingly. “Our motto is: ‘Life is hard. We all need a chicken to make it better.’ ”

The Knitting Tree is located in a drab low-slung office park sandwiched between a car rental place and a golf apparel outlet on Manchester Boulevard. It looks super boring on the outside.

Entering the shop, though, is like walking into a Technicolor Oz. Brilliant spools of yarn line the walls, and therapy chickens perch on high shelves. Walter and Carmen, Corsino’s wire-haired dachshunds, wander about. Carmen barks at everyone; Walter climbs into laps and perches his long nose on the huge wood table that is the heart of the store. The table is where knitters and crocheters — young, middle-aged, elderly, Black, white, Asian and Latino — work and talk and laugh. And sometimes cry. Two of the knitters are nursing ailing husbands.

This place seemed like a multiracial version of a traditional Black barbershop.

“Actually, no,” said Jacqueline Camacho, 70, who worked for 46 years as an airline customer service agent at LAX. “It’s more of a family affair.” Camacho lives in Valencia and comes to Inglewood as often as she can.

“More like ‘Cheers,’ ” added Ana Petrova, 83, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution was crushed by the Soviet army and ended up in Venice, where she and her husband, Peter, operated a business on Lincoln Boulevard, selling and repairing British cars.

“At the barbershop,” said Camacho, “they just gossip and gossip, and we don’t do that here.”

“Everybody knows your name,” said Petrova. “And sometimes we do drink.” (During Wednesday evening potlucks, mostly, although sometimes on Sundays, too. I spied a bottle of Champagne on the nearby food table.)

Camacho was asking Petrova what to do about a stitch she dropped while knitting a sweater.

Creations at the Knitting Tree LA with a political theme.

(Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times)

“Where is it?” asked Petrova.

“Under the armpit,” Camacho replied.

“Live with it.”

Later, I heard Petrova give a knitter advice that could apply to almost any of life’s challenges: “The slower you go, the faster you’ll finish.”

Toward the front of the store, a class was working on a felted tote bag with the blue-and-white “Greek key” design familiar to anyone who has ever bought a cup of coffee in Manhattan.

“It’s fun to nerd out about Greek mythology,” said knitting teacher Theresa Havton, a mother of four adult sons, including triplets. I guessed that her singleton was the first born. “It would not have happened any other way,” said Havton, a former computer engineer, whose husband is a spinal cord surgeon who practices in New York.

“We have a brain trust here,” Corsino told me. “We have doctors, lawyers, nurses, scientists, lots of engineers. During the strike, we had a lot of film industry people. I never see anybody outside of here. This is my social life.”

At the big table, Anjeanette Bumatai, 54, was working on a blanket. She wore a blue baseball cap pulled low over her forehead and a “Babes Ride Out” T-shirt. Bumatai owns an insurance agency, rides a Harley and had just returned from a gathering of female bikers in Deadwood, S.D. During her two weeks on the road, she said, she rode through Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming.

“I was in Trump country,” she told me. “It’s amazing how much people adore him. It’s a cult of personality. I would talk to someone and say, ‘What has he done for you?’ They can’t name anything. As a person of color, I think the majority of Black people do not care for him.”

She sounded suspiciously like a childless cat lady, the infamous insult lobbed at Harris, stepmother of two, by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.

“I guess I am!” she said, laughing. “I guess my husband’s kids don’t matter.”

Corsino, who has sold more than 3,000 emotional support chicken kits — at $39.50 a pop — and 25,000 chicken patterns, told me she is working on a new pattern, based on a popular Harris campaign meme inspired by the British pop star Charli XCX.

Borrowing the shape of the celebrated pink pussy hat popularized during the anti-Trump Women’s March of January 2017, this one will be lime green. Black lettering will spell out the word “BRAT.”

@robinkabcarian

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who is a top contender to be Vice President Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election, posted a cryptic message on social media amid veepstakes speculation.

“Whether it was from my time in the Navy and at NASA, serving in the United States Senate, or visiting our troops overseas: I’ve learned that when your country asks you to serve, you always answer the call,” Kelly posted on X on Sunday.

Harris met with potential vice presidential candidate picks on Sunday as the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee is believed to be a day or two away from making a final decision on a running mate.

Among those on the list are Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Kelly. Also in contention, according to sources, are Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and JB Pritzker of Illinois, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

VP CONTENDER MARK KELLY DODGES QUESTIONS ON KAMALA HARRIS’ POLICY FLIP-FLOPS

Kelly shared his post on Sunday evening, sending the internet into a frenzy about what it could mean.

One user posted the question, “What is happening,” while another posted, “Holy s – – -! It’s you! Are you telling us you’ve been selected for VP, Mark Kelly?”

The posts continued to drop as users let their imaginations run wild.

HARRIS’ BORDER REMARKS HAUNT DOWN-BALLOT DEMS AS LAKE AD PREVIEWS GOP GENERAL ELECTION STRATEGY

“It appears Mark Kelly is the VP pick,” a user wrote.

Some users could not wait to see Kelly debate Republican VP pick JD Vance, calling the latter a “former tech bro” and the former an astronaut.

“My head is spinning. Is Sen. Mark Kelly still in the running or is he out of it,” another user wrote while sharing an animated GIF of Gene Wilder’s version of Willy Wonka. “The palace intrigue is getting old. I hope we know who the running mate is by tomorrow at the latest.”

REPUBLICANS LAMBASTE BIDEN FOR ISRAEL WEAPONS DELAYS: ‘STOP ACCOMMODATING IRAN’

VP Harris is said to be a day or two away from announcing her pick for running mate. (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)

Still, some users were even more confused when they shared a screen grab of a post from Kelly on Sunday afternoon that was later deleted.

The post read, “My background is a bit different than most politicians. I spent my life serving in the Navy and at NASA, where the mission always comes first. No, my mission is serving Arizonans.”

Those confused by the two posts wanted to know: which one is it?

Fox News Digital reached out to both Harris and Kelly but did not immediately hear back.