When former Vice President Kamala Harris was running for president in 2024, there was one person she preferred to be her running mate.
Her “first choice” was Pete Buttigieg. In the end, she did not pick Buttigieg because it “was too big of a risk,” Fox News reported.
Harris revealed that information in her book, “107 Days,” which will be released Sept. 23.
Buttigieg was a former secretary of transportation and mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is also gay.
He “would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,” Harris wrote in her book published by The Atlantic.
“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,” she wrote. “And I think Pete also knew that – to our mutual sadness.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ended up being Harris’ running mate. The two Democrats lost to now-President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
In her book, Harris wrote that Buttigieg was the top contender to be her potential VP out of a list of eight.
Harris favored him 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,” according to The Atlantic.
“I love Pete,” she wrote. “I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends.”
The two ran for president in 2020, but Joe Biden became the Democratic Party’s nominee.
“For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American history,” reads a description of the book on Simon & Schuster’s website.
“From the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race,” it added.
Several people posted about this news on X.
