Former Vice President Kamala Harris says she wanted to pick Pete Buttigieg as her running mate in the 2024 presidential race, but decided that tapping a gay sidekick was fraught with too much political peril.
In her upcoming memoir “107 Days,” Ms. Harris says Mr. Buttigieg, called Mayor Pete from his Indiana mayoral days, “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man.
“But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” she says, according to excerpts in The Atlantic. “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.”
Ms. Harris ultimately tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Mr. Walz received mixed reviews for his performance. He stumbled in his debate against then-Sen. J.D. Vance.
The governor also became a favorite target of Donald Trump, who dubbed him “Tampon Tim” over his decision to sign a bill that put menstruation products in boys’ bathrooms used by students in grades 4 to 12.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Buttigieg, who served as secretary of transportation in the Biden administration, are considered possible 2028 presidential contenders.
Meanwhile, Mr. Walz announced this week that he was seeking a third term as governor next year, likely closing the door on his 2028 presidential ambitions.
Ms. Harris also scored headlines after releasing an excerpt from the soon-to-be-released book in which she said Mr. Biden’s ego and ambition haunted Democrats in the 2024 election.
Ms. Harris writes that the people around President Joseph R. Biden were “hypnotized” into supporting his reelection push despite concerns over his mental fitness.
Mr. Biden’s second-term attempt flamed out on the debate stage in spectacular fashion, opening the door for Democrats to replace him with Ms. Harris.
“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision,” Ms. Harris says. “We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.
“The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
