NEW: Kamala Humiliates Tim Walz In Brutal Retelling Of Run-Up To 2024 Election

The ghost of the 2024 election continues to haunt Kamala Harris as she revisits her ill-fated decision to put Tim Walz on the ticket.

Harris writes in her new memoir that the Minnesota governor was not her “first choice” for vice president, despite the enthusiasm she showed Walz in the days after he was suddenly announced. Many observers speculated that the Democrats’ No. 2 slot became a contest between Walz and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who Harris aides feared would provoke a backlash among pro-Palestinian progressive activists because he is Jewish.

But in “107 Days,” the former vice president writes that her first choice was instead Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay member of a president’s cabinet and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who converted his hometown appeal into an improbable presidential campaign.

Buttigieg was presented with the audacious idea, but he and Harris ultimately agreed that putting a gay man on the ticket of the first black woman to run in the general election would be “too big a risk” for their chances to defeat Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes.

“But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” she continues. “Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”

“And I think Pete also knew that — to our mutual sadness.”

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The selection of Walz checked a box that Buttigieg brought to the table — an affable midwesterner who ostensibly connected with middle America. But that theory fell flat as the Harris-Walz ticket went on to lose the popular vote and every single swing state.

In her book, Harris praises the Biden cabinet member as “a sincere public servant with the rare talent of being able to frame liberal arguments in a way that makes it possible for conservatives to hear them.”

“I love Pete,” she writes. “I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends.”

Early polls for the 2028 contest put Buttigieg near the top of the pack, even ahead of Harris. An Emerson College survey found Buttigieg leading Harris 16% to 13% in a hypothetical Democratic primary, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (12%), Shapiro (7%), and “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (7%) rounding out the top five, the NY Post reported.

Buttigieg made clear earlier this year that he is giving serious consideration to another run for the White House.