Former presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has defended her decision to not pick Pete Buttigieg as her running mate in last year’s presidential election. A recent excerpt previewed in The Atlantic offered some insight into her choice for a potential vice-president. Buttigieg, who went up against Biden and Harris for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 race for the White House election, was her “first choice.”Pete Buttigieg was initially Kamala Harris’ first choice as her running mate. (Getty)However, it was “too big a risk”, she decided and plumped for Minnesota governor Tim Walz instead. “We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” she said.