How Mayor Pete Became the Most Popular Democrat for the Mid Term Elections

White House political aides “recognize the dexterity and want to dispatch him to places that he uniquely can go and where Democrats don’t traditionally campaign,” said one person familiar with Buttigieg’s plans taking shape.

That’s in contrast to the vice president’s team, which has been hoping to rebuild her standing by keeping her away from many tight races and focused largely on Black voters, among whom she remains very popular, and on women as she talks about abortion rights, arguing that she can have a large influence indirectly.

Aides to a West Coast House Democrat in a very competitive race were debating who was going to be their one big ask in the final stretch. The President? The vice president? The first lady?

“A senior staffer on our campaign says, ‘Throwing in two cents from our finance director – our San Francisco people have expressed that they don’t really care about POTUS, VPOTUS or the first lady. … They just really like Secretary Pete,’” recounted one of the aides.

One Biden adviser highlighted an intentional deployment of the Cabinet over the final month in races where they think they’ll matter most, urging them to appear in their personal capacities to avoid violating the Hatch Act provisions on not mixing government work with campaigning. Only a few secretaries beyond Buttigieg, though, have generated much interest: Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, rarely much of a political presence, will also hit the trail soon for a few events.

But of those, Buttigieg is the only one who shows up in early presidential polls. He’s the one who was invited to address House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s retreat for top donors in Napa Valley in August. He’s the one who’s already headlined an event for Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, seen as perhaps the most endangered Democrat in the Senate, and for Nan Whaley, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor.

A return to New Hampshire with ‘high hopes’

Buttigieg, who came in a close second in the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary, was state party officials’ top choice to headline their big fall fundraising dinner, according to party officials, even before a poll that came out in late July showing him leading the field for a theoretical New Hampshire primary, essentially tied with Biden but edging out Harris by 11 percentage points.

To the surprise of some in New Hampshire, the White House political office greenlit the invitation not long after. Tickets sold out.

The morning of the New Hampshire speech, state Rep. Matt Wilhelm proudly tweeted a photo of a “BOOT EDGE EDGE” mug he had left over from when he’d endorsed and volunteered on his presidential campaign two years ago.

“When I was asked by the party, ‘Who do we want as a surrogate?’ not only was I supportive of Pete, because yeah, I want him back here, but I think that he’s the kind of messenger that we want on the ground to get people fired up ahead of the midterms,” Wilhelm said. He remains very popular in the state, added Rep. Annie Kuster, who’d endorsed him in 2020 and had him headline a fundraiser for her campaign this year.

The synth-horn notes of “High Hopes,” his old campaign anthem, played as Buttigieg took the stage. He hadn’t done a big political speech in two years. And while rattling off Biden administration accomplishments – like putting Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court and signing bipartisan legislation providing health care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits – he had some rusty moments working out new lines.

“Most Americans don’t need culture wars every time there’s a gay Muppet or Black mermaid on TV – we need funding for our public schools,” he said in one riff.

But it all built to a very Buttigieg centerpiece, intended to generate knowing smirks more than laughs, and metered out to invite the standing ovation he got.

“Teddy Roosevelt had the square deal. FDR had the New Deal. So I’m going to say this body of defining achievements, this incredibly productive year, amounts to such a big deal that we ought to just call it The Big Deal,” Buttigieg said, putting that up against Republicans’ “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

“And if, in the tradition of our President, you like to insert an extra adjective in there, feel free.”

He ended with a passage that could one day drop right into a political convention speech, soaring past Biden or the infrastructure law or any more Trump mentions, to an aspirational line about building a “truly representative, fully inclusive, multi-racial, democratic republic like the one that has been under constant construction here on US soil for the last 200 years.”

“This is somebody who really believes in the promise of democracy and in delivering results,” Sen. Maggie Hassan said after the final standing ovation for Buttigieg. “And we have seen him delivering results. And his pragmatic approach really means a lot to people here.” Hassan, who is facing a competitive reelection after winning her first term by only 1,017 votes, also had Buttigieg headline a fundraiser for her in Washington earlier this summer.

‘You’ve got to be in Joe Biden’s house’

Two weeks later, on another Saturday night, Harris was the featured speaker at the Texas Democrats’ big dinner in Austin. Every statewide Democratic candidate skipped, except the nominee for state railroad commissioner. Tickets were not as hard to get, though the state chair said it was their highest grossing event ever, and some took note that several state legislators from other parts of the state specifically flew in to be there.

Harris’ stump speeches tend to be more grounded and direct, much like she is herself.

She rooted her Austin speech in home turf stories about former Rep. Barbara Jordan and Lyndon Johnson, leading an enthusiastic call and response. She built up to a line she has often used, paraphrasing, she recalled, “the words of a great American leader, Coretta Scott King, who said: The struggle for justice is a never-ending process. And freedom is never really won; you earn it, and you win it in each and every generation.”

Even though the White House political office lets Harris’ team pick her spots and write her speeches, she can’t stray far. When she talks up Biden’s record, she has to be subsumed to the President. She can’t put her own spin on it, aside from occasional moments, such as two days after Biden rolled out his marijuana policy changes without her in the frame, when she said, “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”