Kamala Harris needs a running mate and it’s not going to be Pete Buttigieg

The job of picking a vice presidential running mate is about a lot of things: balancing the ticket geographically, or doubling down on the soon-to-be-nominee’s worldview, or satisfying supporters of a losing primary rival.

It’s never been about earning more LGBTQ+ votes.

Related:

Rachel Maddow asks Pete Buttigieg if he’d be Kamala Harris’s running mate

He tried to dodge the question but she pressed him.

Unless you count Bill Clinton picking Al Gore as his work wife, an attractive political marriage after four years of awkward dad-son vibes with George H.W. Bush and “fresh-faced” VP Dan Quayle.

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This year, Vice President Kamala Harris has already earned the LGBTQ+ vote with a long history of support for the community, starting with officiating ground-breaking same-sex weddings at City Hall in San Francisco as District Attorney in 2004 — hat tip to then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for giving the greenlight to the headline-making marriages.

Twenty years later, the prospective Democratic nominee is clear that LGBTQ+ rights will be central to the work of a Harris administration.

Those rights, Harris told the American Federation of Teachers convention last week in Houston, are among a group of “fundamental freedoms” under threat from a far-right Supreme Court majority and a potential second, more radicalized Trump administration.

“We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms,” Harris declared to the thousands of teachers at AFT’s annual gathering. “And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on.”

Where other presidents may have needed prodding on the issue—think Biden as VP getting ahead of Barack Obama on same-sex marriage years before he embraced it—Harris is already all in, a joyful supporter who’s also clear-eyed about the threat to “the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride,” as she put it in the same speech.

Harris alerted the world to that hazard in the form of Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, which put Supreme Court precedent in doubt on marriage equality, contraception, and more.

“I think he just said the quiet part out loud,” Harris said of Thomas’ concurrence just days later, calling it a harbinger of other reversals to come.

Now the current vice president is on the hunt for the next VP—she hopes—in an administration dedicated to fighting for those fundamental freedoms. Whoever she chooses will need to partner in that fight as well as complement Harris in a way that balances a winning ticket.

These are the contenders.

It won’t be Pete Buttigieg

Not as important as the final pick but an integral part of signaling the presumptive nominee’s priorities, the unprecedentedly short veepstakes this election cycle says a lot.

Mayor Pete has been on the list since Harris announced, a sign of respect for her Biden administration colleague and rival for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Buttigieg brings a lot to the table, including “pass the torch” appeal, smarts, a tour in Afghanistan, and withering takedowns of the Trump administration on Fox News.

But barring the military service and being a white male, Buttigieg doesn’t add to Harris’s appeal, and a Black/gay ticket would be a bridge too far for too many undecided voters. Except for his stint as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg would bring limited executive or electoral history to the job, a fact he’ll need to remedy if he once again aspires to higher office.

Buttigieg remains an outstanding advocate for the Biden administration’s priorities for the rest of his term. As a Harris campaign surrogate, he helped raise millions on the White Dudes for Harris Zoom meeting on Monday.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is actually younger than Brad Pitt

Walz a darkhorse in the veepstakes a week ago but has risen with his attacks declaring Trump, Vance, Project 2025, and basically the entire MAGA movement just plain “weird”; a week later, it’s a Harris campaign talking point, and the two-term governor has politicos buzzing.

Walz is a fierce defender of LGBTQ+ rights in blue Minnesota, signing a popular “ban on book bans” earlier this year. But even as the Trump campaign has called Minnesota winnable, it remains a solidly Democratic state, and despite being younger than Brad Pitt, Walz looks like he could be his dad, or grandad, or Harris’s white-haired uncle, diminishing next-generation appeal.

Walz doesn’t need to be the Democratic VP nominee to keep on “weird”-bashing Republicans.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has red state appeal in a state Harris will never win

Beshear’s prospects peaked just after Harris announced for president and not long after J.D. Vance joined the Republican ticket; it was a perfect moment of opposition, pitting the Kentucky native Beshear against the Ohio carpetbagger Vance, both claiming Appalachia for their own. Beshear ripped Vance for his unflattering portrayal of Kentuckians in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy as opportunistic and exploitative with passion and sincerity.

Beshear’s LGBTQ+ bona fides include a veto of a draconian gender-affirming care ban for minors passed by the Kentucky legislature, though that veto was overridden.

The conventional wisdom was Beshear could bring red state appeal to a Harris ticket, but others on the veep list are from red-leaning states that a Democratic ticket could actually win, while Kentucky is off the Democrats’ electoral map. Beshear is also the son of a former governor, not a good look for Democrats wanting to avoid comparisons to Clinton and Bush-era entitlement.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is everything you’d want in a 2024 VP pick

Whitmer is young (52), a former prosecutor, and the popular Democratic governor of a rust-belt swing state. She helped achieve unified Democratic control of the state government and has been directly affected by MAGA madness after a plot by extremists to kidnap her was uncovered. She also signed a landmark bill supported by her state’s gay attorney general, Dana Nessel, to ban the “gay panic” defense in assault cases.

And she’s a woman.

The thinking among a faction of Harris supporters was “go bold” with an all-woman ticket to put the choice between Trump and Harris into stark relief. But Whitmer says she doesn’t want to leave Michigan, she’s probably got presidential ambitions of her own and maybe she doesn’t see a path through Harris.

And while a Harris-Whitmer vs. Trump-Vance smackdown could be empowering, Americans have yet to elect one woman to lead the executive branch, let alone two.

Like Harris, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has a law & order background

He’s also a Gen Xer like Harris and came up through his state’s attorney general’s office. Shapiro was elected governor in 2022 when he trounced Trump-endorsed Republican opponent Doug Mastriano by 15 points in the crucial swing state.

Harris and Shapiro have known each other for years since they were both tapped for a prestigious program for rising stars in American politics in 2006. They’ve kept in touch.

As attorney general, Shapiro initiated Pennsylvania’s investigation into a Catholic Church cover-up of sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children over decades, and as governor, he’s endorsed the Fairness Act, which would prohibit discrimination in the state based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

While Shapiro is known for being a tough and smart prosecutor with politically sharp elbows, those qualities mimic Harris’s. There’s also an overlap when it comes to faith; while Harris is Baptist, second gentleman Doug Emhoff is Jewish, as are Shapiro and his wife Lori Ferrara, a onetime Science and Technology analyst in the Clinton administration.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly is an astronaut who’s logged 54 days in space

Kelly, 60, flew combat missions during the Gulf War as a naval aviator before being selected as a NASA Space Shuttle pilot in 1996. He flew four missions, two as commander. His identical twin, Scott Kelly, is also a retired astronaut.

Kelly was twice elected to the U.S. Senate, once following the death of Republican John McCain, whose seat Kelly holds, and again two years later with his defeat of Trump-endorsed opponent Republican Blake Masters; the incumbent won by a comfortable 5-point margin. Kelly is a proven vote-getter in a state very much in thrall to MAGA madness (See: Kari Lake) and is a political refuge for Arizona’s disaffected McCain Republicans.

Kelly is also husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose attempted assassination in 2011 brought renewed national attention to gun violence, an issue Kelly is understandably passionate about. Harris has said freedom from fear of gun violence is one of the fundamental rights her administration will fight for.

Kelly enthusiastically supported the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which Harris led for the Biden administration.

The senator, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, also brings military experience and a deep interest in foreign affairs and the southern border to his job. An interview on NBC’s Meet the Press at the height of campus protests over the war in Gaza displayed not only Kelly’s thorough grasp of the conflict but also his finesse in addressing all sides of a white-hot political debate.

He’s everything Harris could want in a running mate.

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