To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Be still, my heart…
I was close to tears on March 1, 2020, when I heard the news that Mayor Pete had ended his presidential campaign. We took down the Pete yard sign at our home in Cambridge, Mass., and put up one for Joe.
Darlene and I had attended Pete’s official announcement 10 months earlier in South Bend, Indiana. We went door to door for him in Iowa and helped run a caucus in Des Moines on February 3, 2020. That night we waited for hours at his would-be victory rally. By the time the candidate appeared, the result was still in doubt.
Due to an app snafu, Pete’s victory was not officially confirmed until 26 days later. He was thus denied any momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary, which he lost to Bernie Sanders by 4,000 votes on February 11.
We then worked for Pete in Nevada, where he finished third behind Sanders and Biden on February 22nd. Eight days later he ended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done this before, but he reminds me of my son, Beau,” Biden said at their joint press conference in Dallas. “You’re going to see a lot more of Pete than you are of me.”
So. This is all to say I am excited to see Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on most lists of potential running mates for Kamala Harris.
Compared with my personal knowledge of Pete’s talents, I know little about Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Those three seem to top most lists of possible running mates.
I bet each one would make a strong vice president, as would Pete.
I sometimes hear from friends that they like Pete but don’t think America is ready for an openly gay President. The first time I heard him answer that question was at the CNN Town Hall I attended in Austin five years ago. At 13:44 in the YouTube recording he said this:
Frankly, when I first got into politics, elected politics, at the beginning of this decade in Indiana—in Mike Pence’s Indiana—I thought you could either be out or you could be in office, but you couldn’t be both. I came out in the middle of a reelection campaign, because it was just that time in my life when I had to do that.
Pence was governor. We weren’t sure what it would do to my political future in a socially conservative community.
I wound up getting reelected with 80 percent of the vote.
I thought Pete was ready then, at the age of 38 on Election Day in 2020, to serve in the highest office of the land. In the nearly four years since then, I believe he has become even more prepared thanks to his role in Biden’s cabinet.
I will always be grateful that Darlene and I were standing near the stage in a abandoned Studebaker factory in 2019 when Pete said he was there to join us and “make a little news.”
“My name is Pete Buttigieg,” he announced. “They call me Mayor Pete. I’m a proud son of South Bend, Indiana, and I’m running for President of the United States.”
What a ride.
It is clearly far from over.