Could Pete Buttigieg Be Kamala’s Choice?

Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, has admitted that yes, of course, he is interested in being Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

 

 Theodore Schleifer

Reporting from Washington

The New York Times

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Around 24 hours after President Biden made his stunning exit from the presidential race, Pete Buttigieg gathered about 100 of his past donors on a Zoom call.

The call, according to the invitation and to three participants who described it on the condition of anonymity because it was private, was meant to rally his influential benefactors to raise money for Vice President Kamala Harris.

But Mr. Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and a 2020 presidential candidate, made an admission during the Q. and A. that struck at least one person on the call as unusually candid, a message he would bring to television in the ensuing days: Yes, of course he was interested in being Ms. Harris’s running mate if it were on the table.

After he spoke, some people on the call said they would love to see him join the ticket and encouraged listeners to put in a good word for him with members of Ms. Harris’s orbit, one participant recalled. 

That set the wheels in motion for members of this close-knit network of wealthy Democrats who are again trying to propel Mr. Buttigieg to higher office. Some of them immediately began scrolling through their contact lists, reaching out on Mr. Buttigieg’s behalf to prominent Democrats connected to Ms. Harris in a loose, disjointed effort.

This account is based on conversations with eight fund-raisers for Mr. Buttigieg who either were on the Zoom call or are involved in the subsequent outreach.

Mr. Buttigieg has not been coordinating this effort, which is not abnormal in modern vice-presidential shadow campaigning. But if the race to be Ms. Harris’s running mate were decided by major Democratic donors and MSNBC viewers, Mr. Buttigieg might win in a landslide.

Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. — who would be the first openly gay vice-presidential nominee — is being vetted for the job by the Harris campaign.

But people involved in the process see him as something of a long shot, given the popular Democrats, including a senator and several governors, under consideration. 

For one thing, for all his prowess on cable television, Mr. Buttigieg is unlikely to provide an electoral college boost, as he comes from the reliably Republican state of Indiana and recently moved to Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is already leading the effort for Ms. Harris.

And if he is not chosen as her No. 2, Ms. Harris’s ascent could be a serious obstacle for the highly ambitious Mr. Buttigieg, especially if she wins in November. She would be expected to seek re-election in 2028, and it would be unclear what national office Mr. Buttigieg could reach for in the meantime, perhaps leaving him eyeing statewide office or the private sector.

Mr. Buttigieg’s donor network, however, is an asset some other contenders cannot match. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky are both leading contenders, but they have few big donors outside their home states.

Two other vice-presidential hopefuls, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania do have a history of raising large sums from out-of-state donors, but they lack the worker bees surrounding Mr. Buttigieg.

 

In that role, Mr. Kelly raised big money from billionaires who care about gun violence like Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Connie Ballmer, and Michael R. Bloomberg.

Amber Mostyn, a Houston trial lawyer and a major Democratic donor, said she thought Mr. Kelly “would be a fantastic choice,” praising his communication skills. Her law firm donated $750,000 to the gun-control group, now called Giffords.

Another pro-gun-control donor, Mr. Bloomberg, is closer to Mr. Shapiro, giving him $1 million in 2022. Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said he and Mr. Bloomberg saw Mr. Shapiro as a “good, mainstream, moderate, effective governor.”

In his three campaigns for statewide office, Mr. Shapiro has traveled often to Silicon Valley to court contributions. His billionaire backers from the tech industry include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and the cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, each of whom gave him about $1 million last year.  

“I’m making the case for him with everyone I can,” said Mr. Larsen.

 

It is not clear that Ms. Harris needs her running mate to be a powerful fund-raiser, given that her campaign brought in $200 million in the week after Mr. Biden had dropped out. One person close to Mr. Buttigieg’s political team said its argument had focused more on his appeal to Midwestern voters than on his financial connections.

But donors, as always, are eager to be heard. And of all the contenders, Mr. Buttigieg appears to have the strongest lobbying operation behind him.

The small-town mayor rose to the top tier of the Democratic pack in 2019 in part because of his ability to raise money. His financiers took to so-called bundling, or organized fund-raising on a candidate’s behalf, like a sport. They formed bonds with one another during his campaign that has lasted far longer than is typical.

Mr. Buttigieg eventually dropped out and backed Mr. Biden. But to this day, his “investors,” as he called them, share fund-raising invitations and send text messages or WhatsApp chats with their favorite clips of Mr. Buttigieg, such as his widely viewed appearance on Fox News last weekend.

Mr. Buttigieg himself has tried to stay close to these supporters even while serving as transportation secretary. In December, he reconnected with some of them at a party at a private home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., until 1:30 a.m. 

And now, some of his fund-raisers are, on an abridged timeline, reaching out to people in Ms. Harris’s orbit. Eleni Kounalakis, California’s lieutenant governor and a Democratic fund-raiser herself, is among the allies of Ms. Harris who have been contacted, according to two people with knowledge of the outreach. Ms. Kounalakis backed Mr. Buttigieg in 2020.

Many financial supporters of Mr. Buttigieg are nevertheless somewhat pessimistic about his chances.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco who made a splash when she decided to back Mr. Buttigieg alongside Ms. Harris during the 2020 Democratic primary, said it would be “expecting a lot” for the Harris campaign to choose him.

“I mean, we’ve got to go bold,” she said. “It’s big to have a woman of color and a gay man. I think that would be ideal. That was my ideal team. But we also have to be realistic.”

Lizanne Rosenstein, who hosted Mr. Biden in the Hamptons just a few days after his catastrophic debate against former President Donald J. Trump last month, was one of the fund-raisers for Mr. Buttigieg on the Zoom call last week.

Ms. Rosenstein has supported Mr. Kelly as well. She made a $100,000 contribution to Giffords in 2014, and has stayed close to Mr. Kelly’s campaigns.

“I am really excited about any of the supposed front-runners,” she said. “But I would be doing the happy dance if it were either of the two of them.”

Theodore Schleifer writes about campaign finance and the influence of billionaires in American politics. More about Theodore Schleifer