News: The behind-the-scenes feud animating tonight’s debate

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

The behind-the-scenes feud animating tonight’s debate

Oct 01, 2024

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks during an on camera interview on the North Lawn of the White House.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks during an on camera interview on the North Lawn of the White House on July 23. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

RUST BELT RIVALRY — When Tim Walz and JD Vance take the stage tonight for their first and likely only vice presidential debate, the meeting of Midwesterners will also showcase another Rust Belt proxy battle: the long-simmering feud between Vance and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Vice President Kamala Harris commended Buttigieg — like Vance, one of his party’s millennial stars — to Walz as an excellent sparring partner after his turn playing fellow Hoosier Mike Pence during 2020 debate prep after his own presidential bid ran aground in March of that year. Back then, Buttigieg embodied Pence’s mannerisms and folksy I truly do believe expressions; this time, he channeled Vance, in part, by donning a red tie.

Once again, it’s personal for Buttigieg — who has had a yearslong war of words and ideas with both of the candidates he’s played in debate prep.

“Pete’s also a perfect foil for Vance,” said Lis Smith, Buttigieg’s communications Svengali. “They’re close in age, they both grew up in the industrial Midwest, they both attended Ivy League colleges, they’re both veterans of the post-9/11 wars, but that’s where the similarities end. … Pete can puncture that veneer of phony populism better than anyone else.”

Vance and Buttigieg both launched their national political careers on memoirs of growing up in neighboring states. And both used Donald Trump effectively as a foil in 2016. Buttigieg matched Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy with a Medium post titled “A Letter from Flyover Country,” an essay that launched his bid to become chair of the Democratic National Committee. Like Vance, who at the time was calling Trump a “total fraud,” Buttigieg was critical of Trumpism, saying “a hostile takeover of the Republican Party has brought to power a thin-skinned authoritarian who is not liberal, nor conservative, nor moderate.”

Their rift deepened in 2021 when Vance criticized Buttigieg for not having children in an interview with Tucker Carlson as Buttigieg and his husband Chasten were in the process of adoption.

The relationship really came off the rails last year in East Palestine, when, only a month into his Senate tenure, Vance used a train derailment in northeast Ohio to elevate his national profile and ingratiate himself to Trump, joining him there before Buttigieg’s own visit the following day. It was not too dissimilar from how he used Springfield, Ohio’s influx of Haitian immigrants to advance Trump’s line of attack on immigration. Ultimately, they found some common ground on calling for increased regulations for the railroad companies.

“Don’t even get me started on his new running mate,” Buttigieg said in his primetime DNC speech in Chicago back in August. “At least Mike Pence was polite. JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life he has in mind for you, then you don’t count.”

Buttigieg then turned to the camera and addressed Vance directly, focusing on his comment that the “childless left” had no “physical commitment to the future of this country.” “You know, senator, when I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids then. Many of the men and women who deployed outside the wire with me didn’t have kids either. But let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.”

The next day, in an interview at CNN and POLITICO’s grill, I asked Buttigieg about Vance after pointing out some of the echoes of their rise.

“I had more similarities with him back when he was telling the truth,” Buttigieg told me. “He did write very eloquently four or five years ago about how Donald Trump was appealing to the worst in us.”

Vance and Buttigieg’s cold war has spilled into the days just before the debate. Vance campaigned in Traverse City, Michigan last week—the adopted hometown of Buttigieg now—in what a person close to Vance’s campaign said was a coincidence. Vance did not namecheck Buttigieg. This week brought a conveniently timed report from the Associated Press that detailed the Ohio senator’s pleas to Buttigieg for Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds even though he opposed it as a candidate.

Somewhere in the multiverse, Buttigieg, himself a shortlister running mate for Harris, is the one facing Vance tonight. But given his intensive role in preparing Walz, he won’t be that far away in spirit from confronting his Trump-era Rustbelt rival.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at awren@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @adamwren.

What'd I Miss?

— Biden won’t step in to stop dockworker strike: The White House today doubled down on its stance that it won’t force striking dockworkers back on the job, and insisted that impacts to America’s vital goods will be minimal for now. The key phrase is for now. Just after midnight today, thousands of dockworkers from New England to Texas represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association, who load and unload cargo at ports on the East and Gulf coasts, took to the picket lines. So far the Biden administration is sticking to its script: try to bring the union and the shipping industry to the table, monitor the situation and hope the dispute doesn’t drag out.

— Eric Adams accuses DOJ of leaking sensitive case info: Mayor Eric Adams’ legal team asked a judge today to investigate nearly a year’s worth of leaks related to the New York City Democrat’s criminal case, arguing the steady drip of information has made a fair trial impossible. Adams’ lawyers also pointed to another casualty of the coverage: the mayor’s reelection campaign. “For nearly a year, the government has leaked grand jury material and other sensitive information to the media to aggrandize itself, further its investigation, and unfairly prejudice the defendant, Mayor Eric Adams,” Alex Spiro, the mayor’s private attorney, wrote in a federal court filing.

— Iran launches ballistic missile attack against Israel: Iran launched a ballistic missile attack against Israel today, the Israeli military said, as tensions between the two long-time foes ratchet up in the Middle East. The Israel Defense Forces said on Telegram that “missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel” and ordered Israeli civilians to obey air raid sirens and shelter in place. “The IDF is doing and will do everything necessary to protect the civilians of the State of Israel,” the statement said. Iran’s volleys of missiles against Israel represents the latest, and starkest, escalation in tensions in the region, as the U.S. and others have worried that Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip over the last several months could plunge the region into a wider war and drag the West directly into another major Middle Eastern conflict.

Nightly Road to 2024

DEBATE REWIND — Vice presidential hopefuls JD Vance and Tim Walz have hurled rhetorical hand grenades at each other from afar since the start of their campaigns. Tonight, they’ll get to do so in person when they meet on stage in New York for the first — and likely only — vice presidential debate. What will a Vance-Walz matchup look like? For some clues, we’ve analyzed key moments from Vance and Walz’s past debates that shed light on each man’s style on the debate stage.

DO NO HARM — When JD Vance and Tim Walz meet for their sole debate tonight, their jobs will be straightforward: Tear down the opposing ticket, and don’t undermine the top of their own.

But that may be easier said than done. Vance will likely have to answer for his past comments about women and families and for perpetuating false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. And the Ohio senator, who recently spoke out of turn in saying former President Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban, will have to be careful not to get ahead of his running mate in the heat of the moment. Walz, meanwhile, is more used to the glaring lights of the gridiron than the harsh spotlight of the nation’s biggest political stage. And he’ll be facing an opponent eager to tie him to his most progressive policies at a time when the Democratic ticket is trying to reach voters in the middle.

HELENE AFTERMATH — Vice President Kamala Harris will tour damage caused by Hurricane Helene in Georgia and North Carolina as the deadly storm roils the political calendar just over a month from Election Day. The Democratic nominee plans to visit Georgia on Wednesday and survey the devastation in North Carolina in the coming days, according to aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the travel plans. Harris’ team has been working to coordinate her plans to avoid impacting local disaster response efforts.

AROUND THE WORLD

Ireland's Minister for Finance Jack Chambers and Ireland's Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Paschal Donohoe speak in Dublin.

Ireland's Minister for Finance Jack Chambers and Ireland's Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Paschal Donohoe speak in Dublin today. | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images

CASH SPLASH — Tax-rich Ireland unveiled a sweeping giveaway budget today that will put €2.2 billion into voters’ pockets — just in time for an election the government hopes will keep Sinn Féin out of power. Finance Minister Jack Chambers used his budget speech to detail how he’ll give typical workers an extra grand to spend in coming months — and to confirm the government won’t yet spend its “transformational” €14 billion bonus from Apple.

With a hint of a smile on his face, the 33-year-old told lawmakers that Ireland had already collected far more corporation tax than it needs this year from the iPhone maker and hundreds of other U.S. multinationals based here.

PROTEST CRACKDOWN — Giorgia Meloni may have persuaded the European establishment that she is the respectable, even vanilla, face of nationalist right-wing politics, but a crackdown on street protests at home is amplifying concerns about Italy’s increasingly illiberal drift.

In mid September, the Italian parliament’s lower house approved a new “security bill” — which takes aim at climate activists by criminalizing the obstruction of roads and railways, with offenders facing up to two years in jail. If approved by the Senate, opponents claim it would effectively ban street protests in Italy. For the government, which already raised penalties for damaging artworks to €60,000 following high-profile climate protests at Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” it’s a way to to prevent headaches such as the G7 demonstrations in Turin in April, where protesters blocked a highway and set fire to photos of world leaders.

Nightly Number

100

The age that former President Jimmy Carter turned today. Hear the story of how he went from peanut farmer to president here.

RADAR SWEEP

CHICKEN CARNAGE — The hurricane that devastated much of the South and is responsible for the death of over 100 people has also likely led to the death of millions of chickens. The region hit hardest by Hurricane Helene is home to many of the largest chicken producers in the country, who keep chickens in a variety of “poultry facilities” that are essentially large warehouses that pack chickens tightly together. These factory farm operations are often especially imperiled by natural disasters, which in turn imperils both the U.S. economy and human health. For Vox, Kenny Torrella explains the operations and how natural disasters are affecting the future of meat.

Parting Image

On this date in 1970: Friends of the late rock star Jimi Hendrix carry his coffin from the church after funeral services in Seattle.