‘Pete would bring a lot to the pass.’ But Buttigieg is still a longshot for vice president.

Suddenly, Pete Buttigieg It’s everywhere.

The Transport Secretary is blasting the airwaves with his beautiful removals of donald trump and JD Vance. Members of Congress are talking about him. Buttigieg’s digital alumni network is releasing clips of appearances and touting his complementary skills to Kamala Harris. He held a kickoff campaign for Harris in Traverse City, Michigan, on Saturday morning. And an ally in his home state of Indiana — saying they were acting independently of Buttigieg — compiled a dossier evaluating Harris’ options and concluding: “Simply put, the vibrations are high right now.”

The Pete for Veep test balloon is approaching mid-flight. His allies see this as a clear sign that Buttigieg wants the job.

“He’s open to it,” said one person familiar with his thinking.

But Harris’s confidants and allies remain skeptical about her chances, according to interviews with half a dozen of them, all granted the anonymity to speak freely. They anticipate she will be ruthlessly pragmatic in her selection, seeing other candidates from outside the Beltway as better positioned to deliver key states and constituencies.

Of Buttigieg, one said, “I just don’t see it.”

And even those around Buttigieg readily admit they see him as a longshot. He and Harris are products of the Biden administration — not exactly a stark change — and Buttigieg carries some of the same baggage as Harris from his time in the administration. He has been at the center of travel disruptions in his work as transportation secretary, including mass delays at airports, while also ushering in protections for airline passengers and imposing historic fines on carriers. And then there’s the issue of diversity, with some Democrats worried that a candidacy featuring a woman and a gay man could be off-putting to some undecided voters — too much change, too fast.

“We all realize it’s unlikely,” said the person familiar with Buttigieg’s thinking.

Still, for some Harris advisers, Buttigieg, 42, makes an intriguing proposition for a campaign trying to boost the race for generational change. And Buttigieg’s allies are pushing hard for him.

They point out that amid a shortened deadline for Harris to select a running mate, his advanced vetting status — he is a Senate-confirmed Cabinet member — could make him attractive. They say that, in a truncated campaign and with little time to build the identity of the ticket, Buttigieg’s still-fresh national political network and omnipresence as transportation secretary – he has visited 49 states, all but Maine – position him well for the opportunity .

And on the veepstakes PR front, Buttigieg’s stock appears to be rising. Representative. James Clyburn of South Carolina said he would make an “excellent” vice president. Your viral attacks on JD Vance they are racking up views. Frontline members of Congress are praising him. He’s leading in at least one survey of potential candidatesand he’s ready to take a long-planned official tour through the battlefield of Michigan and Wisconsin this week – perfectly timed to prove his worth as a messenger in the Upper Midwest.

But within the Harris campaign, the view of Buttigieg, who is the only other former 2020 primary challenger that Biden elevated to his cabinet, is much more cautious.

Harris swore Buttigieg into her Cabinet role, but they are not especially close. And yet, aides to Biden administration officials and fellow children of academics say there is genuine affection between their spouses, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg. Chasten and Emhoff are scheduled to headline a fundraiser on Fire Island this week. Pete, Chasten and Doug recently enjoyed drinks at one of the secretary’s regular bars in Washington, and the chemistry between the families could be a distinguishing factor.

“They have a great relationship and recognize each other’s talents and strengths,” said Rachel Palermo, a former staffer who worked for Harris and Buttigieg — as Harris’ former deputy communications director and associate attorney, as well as legal secretary. . on the Buttigieg campaign legal team. “I think they both represent the future of the Democratic Party.” She added that she was not endorsing a particular running mate.

Democrats advocating a Harris-Buttigieg pairing essentially want to bolster Harris’ historic bid by offering a ticket led by Harris, who is Indian and Jamaican and grew up in California, and Buttigieg, a gay man from Indiana who now lives in the North. Michigan. He would, they said, verify Vance’s military experience (Buttigieg is an Ivy League fellow, Rhodes Scholar and Marine officer who was deployed to Afghanistan) and also a millennial from the Midwest.

Harris, 59, has already defended generational change against Trump, 78. Buttigieg would help reinforce this argument: the past versus the future.

He is also widely seen as an extraordinarily talented entertainer, a Democrat who can spar ably with Fox News hosts. That could give a boost to Harris, who faced some challenges during one-on-one TV interviews early in her term as vice president. It’s unclear whether Buttigieg would help her win a single state, but he won the most delegates in the Iowa Caucuses and promises appeal in the Upper Midwest.

In a throwback to his presidential bid launched in April 2019 in South Bend, the same three mayors who endorsed his presidential campaign and introduced him X-posted their endorsement of him for vice president last week: Nan Whaley, former mayor of Dayton, Ohio; Steve Adler from Austin, Texas; It is Chris Cabaldon of West SacramentoCalifornia.

Buttigieg has ingratiated himself not just with Democrats in Congress but even some Republicans, inaugurating projects funded by a bipartisan infrastructure law that still scatters federal money across the map and is considered one of Biden’s signature achievements.

Both Harris and Buttigieg repeated to each other 2020 Primary Messages – and Harris’ most recent announcement – centered on freedom.

This week, he is scheduled to visit the battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan in his official capacity, as well as his former home state of Indiana — a ready-made multistate test that aides say has coincidentally been planned for months. And several members of Congress, including the front-line Democratic congressman. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Washington, came to support him as a running mate.

“He’s a veteran, he knows what he’s doing, he’s our best communicator,” Gluesenkamp Perez told POLITICO. “He and I don’t agree on everything, but that will be the case with whoever she chooses.”

Representative. Don Beyer of Virginia, the first member of Congress to support Buttigieg for president, told POLITICO he also supports Buttigieg.

“I’m sure they’re thinking about swing states, although it hasn’t happened since 1960 that a vice president actually helped carry their particular state,” Beyer said in an interview about the Harris campaign. “Therefore, it is not clear that putting [North Carolina Gov.] Roy Cooper on the ticket would help you beat North Carolina or that Josh [Shapiro] helps you in Pennsylvania, but I am not subject to their research. I know that as a person with extraordinary political skills, a good reputation, well-liked, and who did a great job as Secretary of Transportation, Pete would bring a lot to the ticket.

There are more everyday reasons why Buttigieg might continue to speed up the process. The Democratic Party is expected to hold a roll call vote on a running mate by August 7, and the simple mechanics of fielding a candidate could mean the selection could take place as early as this week. That means a quickly accelerated vetting process could favor Buttigieg.

“He’s probably the highest rated candidate of the bunch, just because of his first presidential campaign and also being in the Cabinet,” said Mike Schmuhl, former Buttigieg campaign manager, chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party and member of the executive of the DNC. committee.

Harris and Buttigieg had a mostly friendly rivalry as candidates in the massive 2019 presidential primaries. But Buttigieg successfully raided their centers of financial power across California — Hollywood and Silicon Valley — in a way that caused attacks on his employees. Among those critics was Susie Tompkins Buell, a Democratic mega-donor in San Francisco who, alongside her husband, helped launch Harris’s political career and then held a spring fundraiser for Buttigieg as his star was rising.

In the final months of 2019, as Harris faded, she reflected publicly and privately on what it was — exactly — that made Democrats swoon over Buttigieg. It was a sensitive issue because Harris herself felt it was harder for voters to understand where she was coming from, in part because few who looked like her had campaigned before and none of them had won. Buttigieg, she reasoned, was comfortable, the kind of guy a father wished his son could be when he grew up. On a magazine article published after Harris dropped out of the race, she referred to Buttigieg as “the boy next door.”

The Harris campaign is placing a premium on maintaining party unity, and aides are reluctant to give their own opinions publicly, preferring that everyone mentioned as a possible pick enjoy the attention that comes with it.

Other vice presidential candidates or those around them have expressed hesitations or withdrawn from the process altogether in public. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said she would not accept the vice presidential position. Some strategists working in North Carolina believe there are two reasons why its governor, Roy Cooper, might not be the pick. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, becomes acting governor when Cooper is out of state. Democrats fear he will take temporary measures they consider harmful. There’s also the question of Cooper’s own ambitions to run for Senate.

Others in the mix include Arizona Sen. Marco Kelly, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. However, perhaps the closest to Buttigieg in age, temperament and preparation is Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who has engaged in a campaign of his own.

Harris’ campaign said it is evaluating the candidates the same way Biden evaluated her.

“Vice President Harris has directed her team to begin the process of vetting potential running mates,” Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in response to this story. “This process has begun in earnest and we do not expect to have additional updates until the Vice President announces who will serve as her running mate and as the next Vice President of the United States.”

As for Buttigieg, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday, “I think anyone would be flattered to be mentioned in that context — I certainly am.”

He said: “There’s really nothing else I can or should say about this process other than she makes this decision.”

Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.