After 20 minutes of discussing the importance of voting for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to end what he and several other speakers called a threat to the country, Pete Buttigieg stepped off a small stage at the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood on Friday and made a beeline for Ginny Thornburgh, sitting in the first row several feet away.
Thornburgh rose, then reached out to Buttigieg. The two clasped hands and spoke for several seconds. It was this moment that most symbolized what had happened during the previous hour.
Thornburgh is the wife of the late Dick Thornburgh, long one of the state’s most recognized and admired Republican leaders. He served as Pennsylvania governor (1979-87) and then as U.S. attorney general for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Friday’s rally, attended by about 100 people, united members of the country’s two major political parties in a common cause: defeating the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump.
“It’s surprising to see a scenario where Republicans and Democrats are campaigning together for a Democratic candidate,” said Buttigieg, speaking in his role as a Harris supporter and not as the U.S. secretary of transportation. “But that tells you the moment we’re in.”
Like the event’s other speakers, all of whom were Republicans or independent voters, Buttigieg slammed Trump as a danger to the country’s democracy – speakers described the former president as a liar, a “malignant narcissist,” a criminal and an unserious person who looks out only for himself. Then Buttigieg stated a case for Harris.
Her election, and Trump’s defeat, would usher in “a better era in politics,” one in which the country’s two major political parties can work together to solve problems, he said. Simply not voting for Trump won’t do, Buttigieg added. Republicans must cast their votes for Harris. The stakes are too high to do otherwise, he said. Especially in a so-called battleground state that could determine the election’s outcome.
“Independents and Republicans here in Pennsylvania, which is the center of the political universe right now, could make the difference in the trajectory of Western civilization,” Buttigieg said. “So no pressure.”
Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor, told the crowd that Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election helped convince him the GOP candidate was unfit to hold the office of president. And for Republicans considering voting for Trump because they want action on traditionally conservative issues, he said this about the former president:
“He’s been a fake Republican for the last eight years. He’s told us what we want to hear, but he didn’t do a single thing about it. He told us he was a fiscal conservative; he spent $8 trillion we don’t have …. He told us he was going to build a wall; he built a selfie station. He told us he wanted to protect our best interests abroad, but he became best friends with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. Could you imagine what [former President] Ronald Reagan would say about Donald Trump and his relationship with Vladimir Putin?”
Duncan said his message about the threat posed by a second Trump administration and the need for Republicans to vote for Harris “is my 911 call to America.”
One of the earlier speakers, David Thornburgh, the former governor’s son, glanced at all the pictures of Clemente in the first-floor room and recalled his memories of the late Pirates right fielder playing in the long-gone Forbes Field, a short walk from the Thornburgh home at the time. Clemente died in a plane crash in 1972 while attempting to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. Speakers noted that Clemente is honored for his charity work as well as his baseball skills. The museum, Thornburgh said, is “hallowed ground.”
He described himself a “birthright Republican but an independent voter right now,” then he discussed his father and the values that guided him.
“I truly believe he’d fall in line behind Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and the hundreds and hundreds of other Republicans from around the country and stand up for Kamala Harris,” he said. The former Republican vice president and his daughter, a former GOP congresswoman, have both said they’d vote for Harris.
Buttigieg was introduced by William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts and one the leaders of a national movement of Republicans endorsing Harris. Why is Weld breaking with his party?
“These are dangerous times … they are desperate times for us,” he said. “In times like this, we need our very best people, our very best men and women, to lead the fight.”
Near the end of his talk, Buttigieg discussed the election in personal terms, and how it would affect his two children, which he and his husband, Chasten, adopted in 2021.
“Pretty soon it’ll be high school, and they’ll be looking me in the eye and saying, ‘Papa, what did you do in the 2020s, when it seems like everything was on the line … What did you do?’” Buttigieg said. “And I want to say, ‘I did everything it took to make sure that you are living in a better democracy than the one that was handed to me.’”
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.