As Kamala Harris rushed to pick a running mate last year, her “first choice” was her close friend Pete Buttigieg, but she decided that it would be “too big of a risk” for a Black woman to run with a gay man.
Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes in a passage of her soon-to-be-released book, 107 Days, that I saw. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”
“And I think Pete also knew that—to our mutual sadness.”
Harris instead selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and the two went on to lose to Donald Trump. Her honest recounting of that decision—much more candid than I usually see in political memoirs—highlights one of the core challenges facing Democrats, especially as they try to refocus their message ahead of the next presidential election, in 2028.
After years of highlighting and celebrating the historic characteristics of their nominees, many in the party are now embracing a singular focus: who can win.
The constant battle: The first excerpt from Kamala Harris’ 107 Days Harris writes that Buttigieg originally topped the eight names on her vetting list because “he is a sincere public servant with the rare talent of being able to frame liberal arguments in a way that makes it possible for conservatives to hear them.”
“I love Pete,” she wrote. “I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends.”
Buttigieg fell out of the running before Harris narrowed down her list to a few finalists. A person familiar with their conversations told me that the two did not discuss her reasoning. Spokespeople for Harris and Buttigieg declined to comment.
The two leaders got to know each other as they both ran for president in 2020, when Buttigieg was the party’s unexpected breakout star. The former mayor of the small city of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg adopted a “go anywhere and say yes to anything” media mantra that put him in front of every camera and microphone possible as he tried to grow his name recognition.
Not even 40 years old at the time, the Rhodes Scholar and former naval intelligence officer quickly became one of the party’s most effective communicators and surprised many with his strong performance in the Iowa caucuses. Even after his bid fizzled, he won admiration from the party’s eventual nominee, Joe Biden, who compared him to his late son, Beau, and later appointed Buttigieg as his secretary of transportation.
