White House administrator Pete Buttigieg says it is “a bad look” for Republicans to call Kamala Harris a diversity hire in their attempts to slow down the momentum that has greeted her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket for November’s presidential race.
On Saturday’s episode of the New York Times podcast The Interview, the Democratic transportation secretary said “you can tell” that is the case because of how even Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson has tried to distance himself from that line of attack against Harris.
“You got somebody like Mike Johnson, who is a very, very conservative figure … telling his own caucus, like, ‘Hey, cool it,’” Buttigieg remarked to podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “He’s basically saying that they are embarrassing the party, and I think acknowledging that they are diminishing the party’s chances by indulging in that kind of rhetoric.”
Buttigieg added: “And the fact that they can’t think of what else to do, besides go right to race and gender, isn’t just revealing about some of the ugliest undercurrents in today’s Republican party – it’s also profoundly unimaginative because it means that they can’t speak to how any of this is going to make people’s lives better.”
Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the Oval Office in 2020. She is now poised to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election campaign on 21 July and endorsed her, setting the stage for Harris to reportedly raise $200m for her political warchest in a matter of days.
Supporters of the Republican nominee Donald Trump – who lost the presidency to Biden – have met those accomplishments by disparaging Harris as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. While grappling with a criminal conviction for election-related fraud in a case involving an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him as well as other prosecutions pending against him, Trump has insulted Harris as “crazy”, “nuts”, “dumb as a rock” and – at a rally on Friday – “a bum”.
That approach prompted some Republican leaders to try to warn party members against aiming overt racism and sexism at Harris. Those included Johnson, who said at a Tuesday news briefing: “This election will be about policies and not personalities.”
The Louisiana congressman added: “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender having nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
Opinion polls show Harris is running a tight race with Trump after Biden had fallen several points behind, with support in vital swing states plummeting.
Buttigieg – the ex-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 – is considered to be among a field of contenders to be Harris’s running mate. And in fact, a National Public Radio/PBS News/Marist poll showed him tied as the most popular Democratic vice-presidential candidate for the fall election.
He declined to tell Garcia-Navarro whether he believed he would make a good vice-president.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk like that knowing that the person who needs to make that decision is … her – not me,” Buttigieg said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to wander down that path with you right now.”