Harris: Buttigieg Was My 'First Choice'

Former Vice President Kamala Harris says she would have picked Pete Buttigieg as her running mate last year, but America wasn't ready for the pairing, according to an excerpt of her new book cited by the AP. Harris writes in an excerpt of 107 Days published Wednesday in the Atlantic that former President Biden's transportation secretary was her "first choice," adding that he "would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man." "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 writes.

Her thoughts on selecting a running mate come as potential 2028 contenders begin traveling the US in the early days of the second Trump administration. In the book excerpt, she writes about her love of working with Buttigieg and her friendship with him and his husband, but that the two of them on the Democratic ticket would have been too risky. "And I think Pete also knew that—to our mutual sadness," she writes. She ultimately picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate after his attack line against then-nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance—"These guys are just weird"—spread widely. Harris' book is out Tuesday.