Buttigieg Sparks Debate With Response To Harris Revealing She Wanted Him As Her Running Mate

After former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed in her new memoir 107 Days that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would've been her first choice for running mate in last year's election if it wasn't for the fact that he's gay, Buttigieg responded he'd like to give Americans "more credit," remarks that have sparked a heated debate.

Harris, who ultimately selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, wrote that she felt it would be "too big of a risk" for a Black woman to run for president with a gay man at her side. She described Buttigieg as "an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man."

Harris added:

"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 do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk."

When informed about what Harris had written about him, Buttigieg had this to say before a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Monroe County Democratic Party headquarters:

"I was surprised when I read that. I just believe in giving Americans a bit more credit than that. My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories."

"I wouldn't have run for president if I didn't believe that. You know, I was right here in Indiana when this state turned blue for the first time since LBJ. And it wasn't Bill Clinton who did it, it wasn't John Kerry who did it. That happened in 2008, when Barack Obama was leading the ticket."

"And again and again, just my personal experience getting elected in South Bend and a lot of other things have shown me that you just have to go to voters with what you think you can do for them."

"That's why I'm here in Indiana right now. We had this big rally on redistricting, trying to make sure we can make the case for politics that's about the results we can get for people and not about all these other things."

Buttigieg told Politico that Harris’ concerns were “not something that we ever talked about.”

You can hear what he said below.

Opinions were highly mixed.

Harris' book has also sparked tensions among Democrats after an earlier excerpt published by The Atlantic revealed that she'd described former President Joe Biden's decision to run for office again in 2024 as amounting to “recklessness.”

Harris acknowledged that "of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out" because Biden would have seen it "as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run.”

Buttigieg, for his part, agreed with Harris that Biden “should not have run," telling Meet the Press that Democrats "might have been better off" had Biden dropped out of the race sooner.