Vice President Kamala Harris holds a campaign rally at the Rawhide Event Center in Chandler on Oct. 10, 2024.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revealing in her upcoming memoir that Pete Buttigieg was her first choice for running mate in 2024. At the end of the day she considered him “too risky” for a country still struggling to accept political firsts.
There Were Too Many Unknowns Going Into The Election
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally at the Reno Events Center on Oct. 31, 2024.
The Atlantic reported Wednesday on excerpts from 107 Days, Harris’s book about her short and turbulent run at the top of the Democratic ticket after Joe Biden stepped aside under party pressure. In one passage, she describes Buttigieg as “an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man.” But, she added, “we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man.”
Too Big of a Risk
Vice President Kamala Harris leaves the Nevada Air National Guard base in Reno after a rally on Oct. 31, 2024.
It’s the sort of behind-the-curtain acknowledgment rarely put into print by politicians. Harris didn’t just admit to political calculus; she admitted to political fear. Choosing Buttigieg, she wrote, would have doubled down on the barriers of gender, race, religion, and sexuality in a contest against Donald Trump. “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 said. According to Harris, Buttigieg understood this too—“to our mutual sadness.”
Tim Walz Was Seen As The Safe Choice
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz waves to the crowd during a town hall at Roosevelt High School on Friday, March 14, 2025, in Des Moines.
The former South Bend mayor and Transportation Secretary had been a rising star in the Democratic Party, often floated as a future national candidate in his own right. He made Harris’s shortlist alongside Democratic governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Tim Walz of Minnesota. Harris ultimately picked Walz, a Midwestern governor with crossover appeal and an everyman image that party leaders believed could withstand Trump’s relentless attacks.
Her Relationship With Biden is Still Tense
Jan 20, 2025; Washington, DC, USA; President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrive ahead of the 60th inaugural ceremony on January 20, 2025, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States in a rare indoor inauguration ceremony. The parade was also moved inside Capitol One Arena due to weather. Mandatory Credit: Melina Mara-Pool via Imagn Images
The book also revisits Harris’s fraught relationship with Biden. In a separate excerpt published last week, she suggested his decision to run again in 2024 was an act of “recklessness.” She wrote that she couldn’t be the one to tell him to step aside, knowing it would be read as self-serving. And she accused his staff of fueling negative coverage of her while she was vice president. Buttigieg himself hasn’t distanced from that analysis. Just this month, he told NBC’s Meet the Press that Biden “should not have run” for reelection.
