While Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.
The vice-president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November’s Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days – were on New York’s Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000.
According to reports, the total was a record for the Pines, part of the narrow barrier island that runs south of Long Island, famous as an LGBTQ+ summering spot second only to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee Andrew Tobias told Vanity Fair that the double-teaming husbands had beat the $200,000 haul for a 2016 political event hosted by the singer Cher.
The outlet reported that US Secret Service agents “appeared to waylay hunks in bikini cut swimsuits to smuggle Emhoff on and off the island”. The fundraiser had initially been organized for Harris and Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign – and it had sold out before the vice-president had become the candidate.
“The right to love who you want to love, the right to marry who you want to marry, to do what you want in your home, with who you love, without the government over your shoulder … this affects all of you,” Emhoff told the crowd, echoing fears that a US supreme court with three Trump appointees could eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marriage. “We need to have an army for freedom, an army for justice, led by my wife, Kamala Harris.”
The Emhoff-Buttigieg husband double act raised speculation that it could be a test run for the transportation secretary to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick. Harris has until Tuesday to decide whom to pick as her running mate.
Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, whom many consider as the leading candidate to be Harris’s running mate, may help with his crucial swing state. But he could also bleed votes away from Harris elsewhere over his strong support of Israel’s war on Gaza, which became a constant source of criticism for the Biden White House.
“Of course I want it to be Pete,” fundraiser Jack Kabin said. But Kabin said he was worried “America isn’t ready for a gay vice-president”.
Rumors of Buttigieg’s strengthening contention in the veepstakes come amid a media blitz. He is estimated to have made at least 30 media appearances, trips to two swing states and held a Washington news conference in the past two weeks. In recent days, he acknowledged that he is “probably” being vetted.
In Buttigieg’s favor is his ability as a calm, skilled communicator. He is a Rhodes scholar and a veteran, previously served as a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and he has emerged as formidable critic of Trump and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance.
Buttigieg frequently appears on Fox News. Recently, he went on the Republican-friendly network and criticized Trump supporters for fostering a “warped reality” in which the former president is “perfectly fine … even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks”.
Asked why he was so frequently on the outlet, Buttigieg told Bill Maher in July that it was not his job to speak only to people that agreed with him.
Asked why wealthy men, including gay tech investor Peter Thiel, supported Trump, he said the issues had been made “way too complicated”.
“It’s super simple,” he said. “These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.”
On CNN, he called Vance “a regrettable choice” because he is “somebody who was at his most convincing and effective when he talked about how unfit for office Donald Trump is, and he has not explained any reason, other than of course his obvious interest in power, why he would have changed his mind on that”.
In Esquire magazine, columnist, actor and former White House engagement adviser Kal Penn wrote that Buttigieg is the Democratic party’s “best chance for expanding the electorate and evolving the platform”.
“He’s multilingual,” Penn wrote. “He’s comfortable on the world stage. He is deeply connected to blue-collar voters. He polls exceptionally well.
“Most important, as a young husband and father of two with a modest home in northern Michigan, he speaks openly about his own family’s struggles and triumphs, which mirror what many Americans deal with day to day.”
