Negotiations over President Joe Biden’s first infrastructure proposal, however loosely defined, have provided Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the opportunity to boost his national profile as he and Vice President Kamala Harris use their day jobs to shape their political futures.
The dynamic mirrors a two-person version of President Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” after Harris and Buttigieg suspended their own 2020 White House campaigns against Biden before taking positions in his Cabinet.
But despite Harris being Biden’s heir presumptive, Buttigieg is not ceding the stage as the pair jockey for influence with the new administration and address weaknesses in their resumes revealed by their failed presidential bids.
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Buttigieg, 39, is “obviously” a very ambitious politician, said University of Notre Dame political science professor Geoff Layman, based near Buttigieg’s home town of South Bend, Indiana.
“That Buttigieg has been higher-profile than past secretaries of transportation is not just because of his political ambition or talent, but also because President Biden has decided to really emphasize infrastructure in a way that past presidents have not,” he said.
Layman contended that Biden tapped Buttigieg, the country’s first millennial and Senate-confirmed gay Cabinet member, for the position because he “needed a politically attractive, articulate” transportation secretary to push for his agenda.
“And Buttigieg knew Biden would emphasize infrastructure, which is why he, as someone with presidential aspirations, agreed to accept what has traditionally been a fairly low-profile Cabinet position,” he said.
Chera LaForge, Indiana University East’s political science chairwoman, concurred: “His own existing connections on the national stage may make public outreach easier.”
Buttigieg joined a bipartisan Oval Office meeting convened this week to discuss Biden’s sweeping $2.25 trillion jobs and infrastructure spending package, even though he was not originally previewed as an attendee. Perched on a seat normally reserved for Harris or the guest of honor, Buttigieg took on the appearance of perhaps the key player in the talks. A former vice president who sometimes occupied that seat opposite then-President Barack Obama, the optics were no doubt obvious to Biden. Some presidents have encouraged, even orchestrated, competition among aides, aiming to push them to bring them the best advice.
LaForge described a personal bond between Biden and Buttigieg as well. The men espouse similar center-left political ideologies. Buttigieg, almost half Biden’s age, did skewer Biden during the Democratic primaries for relying on the “same Washington playbook.” But Biden went on to compare Buttigieg to his late son Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, saying it was “the highest compliment I can give any man or woman.”
Buttigieg’s meteoric White House campaign was augmented by his saturation communications strategy. The two-term South Bend mayor and unsuccessful Democratic National Committee candidate spoke with almost every news outlet or platform that requested an interview. And it is a tactic he has redeployed at the Department of Transportation, not typically a high-voltage agency, particularly after former President Donald Trump turned the phrase “Infrastructure Week” into a political punchline.
Besides being a TV fixture, Buttigieg has generated good and bad social media traffic by cycling around his Washington neighborhood, including to his first Cabinet meeting. He called the country’s highway system “racist,” too, building on outreach he conducted during the 2020 Democratic convention after he did not connect with black voters on the trail.
Meanwhile, Harris has so far had an ever-present, though amorphous, role in the Biden administration.
The last person in the room after most of Biden’s private meetings and by his side, ready to assist, during the majority of his public events, he recently tasked her with dealing with the “root causes” of the country’s migrant problem. It is a chance to prove her policy chops after she was criticized during the primary for being an uneven performer.
This week, Harris has been on the road, pitching the “American Jobs Plan” to lawmakers and their constituents. And while she disbanded her 2020 bid before the Iowa caucuses, she is scheduled to stop in first-in-the-nation primary state New Hampshire on Friday.
For Layman, the political fallout for 2024 and onward is tough to decipher. Harris is the clear front-runner to become the Democratic standard-bearer once Biden stands down, but Buttigieg would be a serious contender for the nomination.
“Let’s not forget that he did a good bit better than she did in the 2020 race,” Layman said of the Buttigieg-Harris rivalry.
Buttigieg would only be 54 years old in 2036, younger than Harris, 56, is today. So, Buttigieg could take a position in a hypothetical Harris administration, even vice president, and “bide his time in a way that other potential Democratic challengers could not and would not,” Layman added.
“He dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden within two days of Biden’s win in South Carolina, despite the fact that he arguably had done better than Biden up to that point,” Layman said, referring to Buttigieg. “So, if he was willing to play the long game in 2020, he might be willing to do it again in 2024 or 2028.”
If speculation regarding a Harris-Buttigieg 2028 ticket sounds familiar, that is because White House chief of staff Ron Klain perpetuated the rumor in February. Klain, a top Democratic Party operative, shared, but then deleted, a columnist’s tweet alluding to the possible running mates.
Becoming Harris’s No. 2 would help Buttigieg bridge his experience gap. Transportation secretary “has never been a high-profile Cabinet position, and it certainly hasn’t been seen as a stepping-stone to the presidency or higher-level office,” Layman argued.
“Buttigieg had no viable political path out of South Bend without moving somewhere else or running for or accepting a national-level political office,” he said, re-litigating primary attacks leveled against the “college town” mayor.
It would have been difficult for Buttigieg to have landed deep-red Indiana’s governorship or one of the state’s Senate seats, LaForge explained. Even Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers Democratic stronghold South Bend, tilts conservative.
But a Cabinet position is still hard to convert into the presidency, LaForge continued. Just ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or fellow Obama administration alumni, ex-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.
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“While we’ve had former Cabinet secretaries become presidential candidates before, it isn’t the most traditional path to the White House,” she said. “Even with that work, I wouldn’t put Secretary Buttigieg’s chances above Vice President Harris’s in 2024 or 2028. A vice president running for the presidency is a natural and expected path, and President Biden has also elevated Harris’s role within the White House.”
