PITTSBURGH – After 20 minutes of discussion about the importance of voting for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and ending what he and several other speakers called a threat to the country, Pete Buttigieg walked off the compact stage at the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood on Friday and said: line to Ginny Thornburgh, sitting in the front row a few feet away.
Thornburgh stood up and extended his hand to Buttigieg. They both linked hands and talked for a few seconds. It was this moment that most symbolized what had happened in the previous hour.
Mrs. Thornburgh is the wife of the behind schedule Dick Thornburgh, long one of the most recognizable and admired leaders of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. He served as Governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987 and then as United States Attorney General under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Friday’s event united members of the country’s two major political parties in a common cause: defeating former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“What’s surprising is a scenario where Republicans and Democrats are campaigning together for the Democratic candidate,” Buttigieg said, acting as a supporter of Harris rather than the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. “But that tells you where we are at.”
Like the event’s other speakers, all of whom were Republicans or independent voters, Buttigieg sharply criticized Trump as a threat to the country’s democracy; the speakers described the former president as a liar, a “malignant narcissist”, a criminal and a frivolous person who only cares about himself. Buttigieg then made the case for Harris.
Her election and Trump’s defeat usher in a “better era in politics” in which the country’s two main political parties can work together to solve problems, he said. Merely not voting for Trump is not enough, Buttigieg added, Republicans must vote for Harris. The stakes are too high to do otherwise, he said. Especially in a so-called battleground state that could determine the outcome of the election.
“Independents and Republicans here in Pennsylvania, which is now the center of the political universe, can change the trajectory of Western civilization,” Buttigieg said. “So there’s no pressure.”
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Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, told a crowd of about 100 that Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results helped convince him that the former president was unfit to serve as president. And if Republicans are considering voting for Trump because they want action on traditionally conservative issues, he said of the former president:
“He has been a fake Republican for the last eight years. He told us what we wanted to hear, but he didn’t do anything about it. He told us he was a fiscal conservative; spent eight trillion dollars that we don’t have…. He told us he was going to build a wall; built a selfie station. He told us he wanted to protect our interests abroad, but he became Vladimir Putin’s best friend. Can you imagine what (former President) Ronald Reagan would have said 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.
The Trump campaign has largely dismissed Republican criticism in favor of Harris, with a spokesman recently saying that they are “neither Republicans nor worth listening to.”
David Thornburgh, the former governor’s son, glanced at all the photos of Clemente in the first-floor room and recalled memories of the former Pirate playing in right field at the long-gone Forbes Field, then a brief walk from Thornburgh’s home. Clemente died in a plane crash in 1972 while trying to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. Speakers noted that Clemente was being honored for his charity work and baseball skills. Thornburgh said the museum is “hallowed ground.”
He described himself as “a Republican by birth, but now an independent voter,” and then talked about his father and the values that guided him.
“I truly believe he would line up behind Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and hundreds of other Republicans across the country and defend Kamala Harris,” he said. The former GOP vice president and his daughter, a former GOP congresswoman, have said they will vote for Harris, and Liz Cheney will campaign for Harris in key swing states.
Buttigieg was introduced by William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts and one of the leaders of the national Republican movement supporting Harris. Why is he breaking with his party?
“These are dangerous times… these are desperate times for us,” Weld said, explaining why he was breaking with his party. “In times like these we need our best people, our best men and women, to lead the fight.”
At the end of his speech, Buttigieg spoke personally about the election and its impact on his two children, whom he and his husband Chasten adopted in 2021.
“It’ll be high school soon and they’ll be looking me in the eye and asking, ‘Dad, what did you do in the 2020s when everything seemed to be at risk… what did you do?’” Buttigieg said. “And I want to say, ‘I did everything necessary to make sure that you live in a better democracy than the one that was handed to me.'”
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