Suddenly, Pete Buttigieg is everywhere.
The transportation secretary is blitzing the airwaves with his Midwest-nice takedowns of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Members of Congress are talking him up. Buttigieg’s digital alumni network is circulating clips of appearances and touting his complementary skills to Kamala Harris. He did a canvassing kickoff for Harris in Traverse City, Michigan, on Saturday morning. And an ally in his home state of Indiana — saying they were acting independently of Buttigieg— has compiled a dossier evaluating Harris’ options and concluding: “Simply put, the vibes are high right now.”
The Pete for Veep trial balloon is approaching mid-flight. His allies view it as a clear signal that Buttigieg wants the job.
“He’s open to it,” a person familiar with his thinking said.
But Harris confidants and allies remain skeptical about his chances, according to interviews with a half-dozen of them, all granted anonymity to speak freely. They anticipate she’ll be ruthlessly pragmatic about her selection, viewing other contenders from outside the Beltway as better positioned to deliver key states and constituencies.
Of Buttigieg, one said, “I just don’t see it.”
And even those around Buttigieg readily concede they view him as a longshot. He and Harris are both products of the Biden administration — not exactly screaming change — and Buttigieg carries some of the same baggage as Harris from their time in the administration. He has been at the center of travel disruptions in his job as transportation secretary, including mass delays at airports, even as he has ushered in protections for airline passengers and leveled historic fines against carriers. And then there is the matter of diversity, with some Democrats fearful a ticket with a woman and a gay man may be unpalatable to some swing voters — too much change, too fast.
“We all realize it’s unlikely,” the person familiar with Buttigieg’s thinking said.
Still, to some Harris advisers, Buttigieg, at 42, makes an intriguing pitch for a campaign trying to make the race about generational change. And Buttigieg’s allies are pushing hard for him.
They point out that amid a compressed time-frame for Harris to select a running mate, his advanced vetting status — he is a Senate-confirmed Cabinet member — could make him appealing. They say that in a truncated campaign with little time to build out the ticket’s identity, Buttigieg’s still-fresh national political network and omnipresence as transportation secretary — he has visited 49 states, every one but Maine — position him well for the opportunity.
And in the public relations front of the veepstakes, Buttigieg’s stock appears to be rising. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina has said he would make an “outstanding” vice president. His viral hits on JD Vance are racking up views. Frontline members of Congress are singing his praises. He’s leading in at least one poll of potential candidates, and he’s poised to make a long-planned official trip across battleground Michigan and Wisconsin this week — perfectly timed to prove his mettle as a messenger in the Upper Midwest.
But inside Harris’ campaign, the view of Buttigieg, who is the only other former 2020 primary competitor Biden elevated into his Cabinet, is far more circumspect.
Harris swore Buttigieg into his Cabinet role, but they are not especially close. And yet aides to both Biden administration officials and the fellow children of academics say there is genuine affection between their spouses, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg. Chasten and Emhoff are scheduled to headline a fundraiser in Fire Island this week. Pete, Chasten and Doug recently enjoyed drinks at one of the secretary’s regular Washington watering holes, and chemistry between the families could be a distinguishing factor.
“They have a great rapport, and they recognize each other’s talents and strengths,” said Rachel Palermo, a former staffer who has worked for both Harris and Buttigieg — as Harris’ former deputy communications director and associate counsel, as well as a law clerk on the Buttigieg campaign’s legal team. “I think they both represent the future of the Democratic Party.” She added she was not endorsing a particular running mate.
Democrats advocating for a Harris-Buttigieg pairing want to essentially reinforce Harris’ history-making gambit, offering a ticket led by Harris, who is Indian and Jamaican and grew up in California, and Buttigieg, a gay man from Indiana who now lives in Northern Michigan. He would, their thinking goes, check Vance’s military experience (Buttigieg is a fellow Ivy Leaguer and Rhodes Scholar and Naval officer who deployed to Afghanistan) and also a Midwestern millennial.
Harris, at 59, has already been making the case for generational change against Trump, 78. Buttigieg would help reinforce that case: the past versus the future.
He also is widely viewed as an uncommonly talented performer off-script, a Democrat who can ably spar with hosts on Fox News. That could provide a lift to Harris, who had some challenges during one-on-one TV interviews earlier in her tenure as vice president. It’s unclear whether Buttigieg would help her carry a single state, but he won the most delegates in the Iowa Caucuses, and promises appeal in the Upper Midwest.
In a throwback to his presidential bid launched in April of 2019 in South Bend, the same three mayors that endorsed his presidential campaign and introduced him then have all posted to X their endorsements of him as vice president this past week: Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton, Ohio; Steve Adler of Austin, Texas; and Chris Cabaldon of West Sacramento, California.
Buttigieg has ingratiated himself to not only congressional Democrats, but even some Republicans, doing ribbon cuttings for projects funded by a bipartisan infrastructure law that still splashes federal money across the map and ranks as one of Biden’s signature accomplishments.
Both Harris and Buttigieg have echoed one another’s 2020 primary messages — and Harris’ most recent ad — centering on freedom.
This week, he is expected to tour battlegrounds Wisconsin and Michigan in his official capacity, as well as his former home state of Indiana — a readymade multi-state tryout that aides say had coincidentally been planned for months. And multiple members of Congress, including frontliner Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, have come out to support him as the running mate pick.
“He’s a veteran, he knows his shit, he’s our best communicator,” Gluesenkamp Perez told POLITICO. “He and I don’t agree on everything, but that’s gonna be the case with anyone she picks.”
Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, the first member of Congress to endorse Buttigieg for president, told POLITICO he is also backing Buttigieg.
“I’m sure they’re thinking about battleground states, although it hasn’t been since 1960 that a vice president helped actually take their particular state,” Beyer said in an interview of the Harris campaign. “So it’s not clear that putting [North Carolina Gov.] Roy Cooper on the ticket would help you win North Carolina or that Josh [Shapiro] helps you in Pennsylvania, but I’m not subject to their research. I do know, just as a person with extraordinary political skills, a good reputation, well liked, and done a great job as secretary of Transportation, Pete would bring a lot to the ticket.”
There are more quotidian reasons Buttigieg could continue to accelerate in the process. The Democratic Party is expected to hold a roll call vote on a running mate by Aug. 7, and the sheer mechanics of introducing a nominee could mean the pick could come as early as this week. That means a rapidly accelerated vetting process could favor Buttigieg.
“He’s probably the most vetted candidate of the bunch, just because of his first presidential campaign, and also being in the Cabinet,” said Mike Schmuhl, Buttigieg’s former campaign manager, the chair of the Indiana Democratic Party and a member of the DNC’s executive committee.
Harris and Buttigieg had a mostly friendly rivalry as candidates in the massive 2019 presidential primary field. But Buttigieg successfully incurred into her financial power centers across California — Hollywood and Silicon Valley — in ways that gave her staff fits. Among those slights was Susie Tompkins Buell, a Democratic mega donor in San Francisco who alongside her husband helped launch Harris’ political career, then held a spring fundraiser for Buttigieg while his star was rising.
In the waning months of 2019, as Harris faded, she mused publicly and privately about what it was — exactly — that made Democrats swoon over Buttigieg. It was a sensitive topic, because Harris herself felt like it was harder for voters to understand where she was coming from in part because few who looked like her had campaigned before, and none of them had won. Buttigieg, she reasoned, was comfortable, the kind of guy a parent wished their own son could grow up to be. In a magazine article published after Harris exited the race, she referred to Buttigieg as “the boy next door.”
The Harris campaign is putting a premium on maintaining party unity, and aides are reluctant to give their own opinions publicly, preferring that everyone mentioned as a possible pick bask in the attention that comes with it.
Other vice presidential contenders or people around them have expressed hesitations or outright removed themselves from the process in public. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she would not accept the vice presidential position. Some strategists working in North Carolina believe there are two reasons their governor, Roy Cooper, might not be the pick. Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, becomes acting governor when Cooper is outside the state. Democrats fear he would take actions in his temporary capacity they view as harmful. There also is the question of Cooper’s own ambitions of running for Senate.
Others in the mix include Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Yet perhaps the closest to Buttigieg in age, temperament and preparation is Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who engaged in a campaign of his own.
The Harris campaign said it is evaluating candidates in the same way Biden evaluated her.
“Vice President Harris has directed her team to begin the process of vetting potential running mates,” said Kevin Munoz, a Harris campaign spokesperson, in response to this story. “That process has begun in earnest and we do not expect to have additional updates until the Vice President announces who will be serving as her running mate and as the next vice president of the United States.”
As for Buttigieg, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday, “I think anybody would be flattered to be mentioned in that context — I certainly am.”
He said, “There is really not more I can or should say about that process other than she’s going to make that decision.”
Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
