Why I'm pissed it wasn't Pete.
He's more than a politician. For many gay Americans, Pete Buttigieg represents what could have - and should have - been.
I’m pissed off at Kamala Harris, and I don’t care who knows it.
A YouGov poll at the end of last month showed Pete Buttigieg was the running mate Democrats most approved of. An Ipsos poll, meanwhile, showed that Buttigieg had the most name recognition and the highest favorability overall from voters across the board.
This is an unpopular thing to say, but Kamala Harris is the nominee because she was anointed by Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment. No one cast a vote for her to be the party’s nominee. Yes, millions of Americans (including myself) voted for her to be Vice President in 2020, but that is not the same as wanting her to be president. We never got a say in that.
And you know what? Most of us were okay with having the right to decide the party’s nominee taken from us because we recognize that these are extraordinary times and the dangers of a second Trump presidency outweigh every other consideration. That said, we hoped – or, at least, I hoped – that Harris would take into consideration the mood of the party and the nation when picking a running mate. That would at least provide some sense of input, of consultation, of small-d democratic legitimacy to the ticket.
She did not. Instead, she went with “vibes” and picked Tim Walz. The Governor of Minnesota seems like a perfectly lovely man with fantastic progressive credentials. I have no ill-will toward him, nor will I say a negative word against him. I don’t know much about him, which is true of most voters, but what I do know I like. He seems like a stand-up guy.
It may seem ridiculous, then, that I’ve spent the past 36 hours rage-tweeting about his selection as Harris’ running mate over my preferred candidate, Pete Buttigieg. So, I want to unpack the reasons I’m so upset by this both to put it on record and to hopefully make people understand why, for at least a handful of us, this is such a bitter pill to swallow. Then I will attempt to swallow said bitter pill and move on, because we must defeat Donald Trump in November. Nothing – NOTHING – is more important than that.
When Harris boldly announced “we are not going back,” I felt tingles. It was the kind of pugnaciousness I have been waiting for Democrats to show. This election, I thought, could and should be framed exactly like that: the values of the past vs. the values of the present and future; inclusion vs. exclusion; more freedom vs. less freedom. It’s the kind of framing that highlights the stakes and makes people stop to question whether backwards is truly the direction we want to head.
I expected, then, that boldness to translate to the ticket. In picking Pete Buttigieg, Harris could have boldly defied those who say the country isn’t ready for a Black woman president and a gay vice president. “I dare you to bring on the hate,” she would have been signaling. Against JD Vance, Buttigieg – with his darling husband and precious young children – could have illustrated in stark and unflinching terms the inhumanity of the Republican ideal of family and the sheer cruelty of not only their rhetoric, but their policy.
Because here’s the thing: I disagree with the prevailing wisdom, wisdom it seems Harris herself bought into, that the country isn’t ready for a ticket led by a Black woman with a gay running mate. No one who would refuse to vote for Harris because she picked a gay man for her Veep is going to vote for her anyway. Those people are a lost cause, electorally speaking. Trump has them firmly in his camp.
Buttigieg’s selection as Harris’ running mate would have been historic. It would have represented to lesbian and gay Americans that she sees us as much a part of the American tapestry as straight couples. It would have been a watershed moment, signaling that we have reached inclusion and acceptance in ways previously unheard of. That we truly are not going back.
In fairness, I can name reasons why Buttigieg shouldn’t be selected. He has never won a statewide race. (But then, what Democrat can in ruby-red Indiana?) His ties to McKinsey were something of an albatross around his neck in 2020 and could’ve been exploited in 2024. No doubt JD Vance would have attacked him on his handling of the train derailment in West Palestine, Ohio, which was a defining disaster of his time as Transportation Secretary. He served in the Biden administration, and running a Biden-continuation ticket like that might have hurt her with voters who didn’t like the President but are willing to give the Vice President a chance. All of these are true and valid weaknesses Buttigieg would have brought to the ticket.
None of them outweigh his strengths or the weaknesses brought by other candidates, including Walz, who I fear Republicans will successfully paint as soft on crime because of his handling of the 2020 George Floyd protests in Minnesota. Buttigieg was the strongest choice and he was the right choice. And that he wasn’t selected is something I will not soon forgive Kamala Harris for. It feels like a betrayal not only as a gay man, but a betrayal of her message of not going back. She could’ve moved us boldly forward, and she chose not to. How can I trust her if her actions don’t match her rhetoric?
Watching Harris rally with Walz in Philadelphia last night reminded me of watching Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008. Everyone else is happy, but my joy at seeing a history making candidate with their old straight white guy running mate was tempered by the heartbreak of what the gay community lost. In 2008 it was our right to marry in California; the same night Obama was elected, Proposition 8 passed, stripping lesbian and gay Californians of equality only just achieved months before. Last night, it was the denial of a gay vice president.
Implicit in this is the capitulation that we are still too much for the Democrats. For the American people. That there is only so much inclusion that can be stomached, even by Kamala Harris. That to win necessarily means sacrificing parts of the coalition that got Democrats to the White House in 2008, 2012, and 2020, and that gay and lesbian Americans are once again expected to not just be the sacrifice but be happy about it.
I can’t be happy, but I desperately want to be. Don’t you think I want to join in the joy, the optimism, the excitement I saw last night watching Walz be feted? Of course I do! I was so energized when Harris replaced Biden. I want to feel that again!
I don’t though. Instead, I feel that once again, being gay is too much of a stigma, too far out of the mainstream to be included by Democrats. They’ll pay lip service to us and our equality, but that’s it. Where the rubber hits the road, they’ll leave us behind.
Does Harris mean to send this message? Probably not. Is she aware some of us will have received it, though? Given how excited she was to tell everyone about Tim Walz’s time as the faculty advisor to a gay-straight alliance in the late ‘90s, I think so. She was underscoring his bona fides, as if to say “yes, I overlooked the most qualified choice and asked gay people to once again wait their turn but look how kind this grandpa is.”
In 2008 that would have been enough because it was more than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden had ever done for the gay community. That changed, of course, while in the White House. But the truth is that in 2008 as in 2024, the gay community was not seen as a cornerstone constituency of the Democratic Party but as an inconvenient ally who should shut up and accept our second-tier status so straight people won’t be upset.
I find it hard to trust Harris when she says “we are not going back” because she had a chance to stake a claim on progress and she chose not to. Her words ring hollow now. She had a chance to shift the paradigm of American politics, and she didn’t. She pulled the ladder up behind her, and that breaks my heart.
For a lot of gay folks, myself included, Pete Buttigieg is not just a politician. He is an avatar for all we never thought was possible. Growing up as a gay boy in eastern Kentucky – I came out at 15, in 2001 – I never thought we would achieve marriage equality in my lifetime. The day Obergefell was decided is one of the happiest days of my life not because I was in a rush to wed (I’m still woefully single), but because it was a long-overdue acknowledgement of my basic equality as an American.
Picking Buttigieg would not have materially changed my life. That isn’t the point. Our presidents and vice presidents are not just politicians. They are heads of state. They represent us as a nation. It’s why when there is a national tragedy, we look to them to be consoler in chief. They aren’t just the head of government, but rather the embodiment of our values, our principles, living embodiments of the nation itself. They are symbols of who we are and what we strive to be.
To that end, picking Pete Buttigieg would have sent a powerful message that in America, it is what you do and not who you love that matters. It isn’t that we just want any gay candidate to be VP – no one was upset she wasn’t considering any number of gay candidates, from Jared Polis to Tammy Baldwin – but because there was a VP candidate who the base wanted, swing voters wanted, and who was indisputably qualified (Harris wouldn’t have vetted him if she didn’t think so) and he was still passed over.
Is being gay always going to be a hindrance? That’s the question I’m asking now. You can argue that’s unfair, that she passed over straight men too. What you can’t deny is that there were serious undertones of fear that a gay man would be electorally costly. I’ve already said I don’t believe that’s true, and I’ve provided polling data to back that up. Still, people said it. To my face. In Facebook comments and on Twitter/X. You’re trying to tell me that wasn’t part of the calculation Harris made? I’m sorry, but every experience I have had as a gay man in America since I came out 23 years ago tells me otherwise.
You see, Pete Buttigieg isn’t just the most popular, and he isn’t just gay. He could have brought so much to the ticket, things she gets with Walz but could also have gotten with him.
Buttigieg, like Walz, brings Midwestern appeal (he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana and now resides in Michigan, his husband’s home state). He is the most talented political communicator around, and the bravest, too; name me another Democrat who regularly eviscerates Fox News talking points on Fox News. He has executive experience both as a cabinet secretary overseeing a department larger than some states and as a mayor, which though people sneer at in many ways is the most hands-on executive experience any elected official can have.
If four years in the United States Senate was enough to qualify former state senator Barack Obama for the presidency, four years as Secretary of Transportation is enough to qualify former mayor Pete Buttigieg for the vice presidency. You will never convince me otherwise. As mayor you are responsible for the things people depend on most on in their daily lives – their roads, their garbage pickup, their utilities, their parks, their schools – and are much more readily accessible to hear their grievances than is a governor. Seeing people diminish the role of mayor, or acting like it isn’t a sufficient stepping-stone to higher office, is extremely insulting and shortsighted.
Harris, in selecting Walz, has prioritized going after Trump voters who will never give her the time of day with making history and selecting the best choice – one which would have galvanized a part of the Democratic base. In doing so, she has signaled to us that she does not consider us a core part of the base the way other groups are so often highlighted as the heart of the Democratic Party. No one in the party batted an eyelash when Joe Biden said he would pick a Black woman as his running mate. It was understood that Black women are an important constituency within the party, and that there are plenty of Black women qualified to be Vice President. One of them is now on the cusp of becoming president because Joe Biden saw her potential.
Lesbian and gay folks are also an important core of the base; nearly 70 percent of us were ready to cast ballots for Biden, and that was with the tepid support he received prior to the debate debacle. We represent seven to eight percent of the electorate and proved decisive in Biden’s 2020 victory. We will no doubt prove decisive in Harris’ victory in 2024, especially in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Yet we are not treated like it.
Instead, we are expected to fall in line. That has never been a strength of mine. I am obstinate, and at this moment, I am angry.
Passing over Buttigieg was a monumental mistake. I don’t live in Harris’ head so I can’t say why she did it. All I can say is that while she has my vote, she’s lost my trust and support. She’ll have to work to gain it back.