Pete Buttigieg said he was “surprised” to learn that former Vice President Kamala Harris did not choose him as her running mate because of his sexual orientation.
Harris explained in her upcoming book that Buttigieg was her first choice to be her running mate, but she passed over him because it was “too big of a risk” to add him to the ticket, The Atlantic reported on Wednesday. She said that Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man.”
Buttigieg told Politico on Thursday that he was “surprised” to read that passage from Harris’s book and rebuked her for suggesting that the U.S. would not accept a gay man on the ticket.
“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,” Buttigieg said, according to Politico. “And I wouldn’t have run for president if I didn’t believe that.”
Buttigieg pointed to his own elections as mayor of South Bend, Indiana and to former President Barack Obama’s election as examples of his strategy.
“You just have to go to voters with what you think you can do for them,” he said. “Politics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.”
Buttigieg, who served as former President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary, emerged as a rising star in the Democratic Party during the 2020 primary. Harris ultimately decided that Buttigieg was “too big of a risk” to add to the ticket, according to 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,” she added.
Harris is just one of many possible Democratic contenders for the 2028 presidential election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Buttigieg, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are also potential contenders for the nomination.
Newsom recorded 25% support in a recent Emerson College poll about the 2028 presidential primary. Trailing Newsom are Buttigieg with 16%, Harris with 11%, Shapiro with 5%, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with 4% each.