(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Embattled former Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly admitted in her forthcoming book, 107 Days, that she passed over Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, as her running mate in 2024 because he is gay.
Tellingly, Buttigieg was considered by her own team to be one of the best-qualified choices. However, his sexual orientation proved too much.
“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 The Atlantic.
“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 added.
Buttigieg, who is married to a man and has two children, rebuked Harris’s remarks in a Thursday interview with Politico.
“I was surprised when I read that. I just believe in giving America more credit than that,” he said. “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.”
Harris’s decision to pass on Buttigieg highlights a contradiction with her and the Democrats’ claims about Trump’s record on LGBTQ matters.
In 2020, Trump became the first president to appoint an openly gay man to a cabinet-level position when he elevated Richard Grenell to acting Director of National Intelligence. In his second term, Trump appointed Scott Bessent, an openly gay man, as treasury secretary in 2025.
