‘Made me very sad’: Kamala Harris says picking gay VP with Black woman president would’ve been ‘real risk’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris shared in her new book that she wanted Pete Buttigieg as her running mate during her 2024 presidential race. But she decided against picking the former Transportation Secretary because she worried about how voters would react to a ticket with both a Black woman and a gay man.

Harris talks about this in her book 107 Days, which tells the story of her short presidential campaign after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July 2024. Harris wrote that Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner if I were a straight white man.” She explained why she made this tough choice in her book.

“We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” Harris wrote, according to Fox News. “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. And I think Pete also knew that to our mutual sadness.” Harris later told MSNBC that the choice “made me very sad” but she knew “it would be a real risk” because the election against Donald Trump was so important.

Emanuel thinks Harris made the wrong choice

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel disagreed with Harris’s thinking when he appeared on CNN’s “The Arena.” Emanuel said Harris was right about the political stuff but wrong about what matters most when picking a vice president. He talked about what he calls “the cabinet room test” for choosing a running mate.

“This is a call about who are you comfortable when you are having, and there are going to be plenty of those cabinet meetings,” Emanuel said. “Who’s the one person who you can totally trust as copilot? And even though you’re angry and frustrated, you respect their opinion enough and their judgment enough to keep talking at you and to you.”

Emanuel said picking a vice president should be about trust and good judgment, not just politics. He pointed to how former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton followed their gut feelings when making similar choices. “To me, she was right about the political pieces, but she was wrong about the biggest question that comes to picking a vice president,” he said.

Buttigieg was surprised by Harris’s words, telling Politico that he believes in “giving Americans more credit.” He said voters care more about what candidates will do for their lives, not what groups they belong to. Harris ended up choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and the Democratic ticket lost to Trump in the November 2024 election. In her book, Harris was critical of Walz’s debate showing against JD Vance, writing that she felt “mortified” while watching him have trouble during the October 2024 vice presidential debate.