Kamala Harris Reveals Who She Really Wanted as Her VP Running Mate

Kamala Harris is opening up about one of the most consequential decisions of her political career — and admitting she didn’t actually get the running mate she wanted.

In her upcoming memoir 107 Days, Harris reveals that her “first choice” for the 2024 ticket was then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. But she ultimately decided America wasn’t ready to embrace a team made up of a Black woman and a gay man.

“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,” Harris wrote, adding that she believed Buttigieg understood her reasoning “to our mutual sadness.”

Harris described Buttigieg as her ideal partner if she were a “straight white man,” calling him a rare talent who could communicate progressive ideas in a way conservatives might actually hear. At 42, he was also viewed as a generational contrast to the 81-year-old Joe Biden, whose campaign collapse eventually handed Harris the Democratic nomination.

Still, Buttigieg never made it past Harris’ initial shortlist of eight contenders. Instead, she went with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whose mix of Midwestern charm and progressive chops won her confidence. Walz quickly rose to prominence with his viral “Republicans are weird” line that became a defining Democratic attack.

Harris doesn’t reveal whether Walz knew he wasn’t her first choice, though sources told The Atlantic he was never made aware of her preference for Buttigieg.

Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020 and remains one of the few Democrats to regularly appear on Fox News, is now being floated as a possible 2028 contender.