Pete Buttigieg
Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who served as the 19th United States secretary of transportation from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned him the nickname "Mayor Pete".
Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oxford, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. In 2007, he began three years of work at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. From 2009 to 2017, he was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was mobilized and deployed to the war in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014. Before being elected as mayor of South Bend in 2011, Buttigieg worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, Joe Donnelly, and John Kerry, and ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for Indiana state treasurer in 2010. While serving as South Bend's mayor, Buttigieg came out as gay in 2015. He married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher and writer, in June 2018. Buttigieg declined to seek a third term as mayor.
Buttigieg ran in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, launching his campaign for the 2020 presidential election on April 14, 2019. He became the first openly gay man to launch a Democratic presidential campaign. Despite initially low expectations, he gained significant momentum in mid-2019 when he participated in several town hall meetings and television debates. Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and placed a close second in the New Hampshire primary. By winning Iowa, he became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential primary or caucus. Buttigieg dropped out of the race on March 1, 2020, and endorsed Joe Biden the following day.
President-elect Biden named Buttigieg as his nominee for Secretary of Transportation in December 2020. His nomination was confirmed on February 2, 2021, by a vote of 86–13, making him the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Nominated at age 38, he was also the youngest Cabinet member in the Biden administration and the youngest person ever to serve as Secretary of Transportation. Press reports had mentioned Buttigieg as a possible running mate for Kamala Harris upon the start of her 2024 presidential campaign, though he was ultimately not selected.
Early life and career
Pete Buttigieg was born on January 19, 1982, in South Bend, Indiana, to Jennifer "Anne" Montgomery and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II. He is an only child. His parents met and married while employed as faculty at New Mexico State University. His father was born in Ħamrun, Malta, and emigrated to the United States to pursue his doctorate. Buttigieg's father embarked on a career as a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend. Buttigieg's mother also taught at the University of Notre Dame for 29 years. His father, a translator of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and the editor of a three-volume English edition, influenced his son's decision to study literature in college.Education
Buttigieg was valedictorian of the class of 2000 at St.Joseph High School in South Bend. That year, he won first prize in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage essay contest. He traveled to Boston where he accepted the award and met Caroline Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy family. The subject of his essay was the integrity and political courage of then U.S. representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of only two independent politicians in Congress.In 2000, Buttigieg was one of two students chosen to be a delegate from Indiana to the United States Senate Youth Program, an annual scholarship competition sponsored jointly by the U.S. Senate and the Hearst Foundations.
In his last high-school year, Buttigieg was named the school valedictorian, voted senior class president and chosen Most Likely to be U.S. President.
After graduating from high school, Buttigieg attended Harvard College, where he majored in history and literature. He became president of the Student Advisory Committee of the Harvard Institute of Politics and worked on the institute's annual study of youth attitudes on politics. His undergraduate thesis, The Quiet American's Errand into the Wilderness, examined the influence of Puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as reflected in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Buttigieg was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. In 2007, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in philosophy, politics, and economics after studying at Pembroke College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was an editor of the Oxford International Review, and was a co-founder and member of the Democratic Renaissance Project, an informal debate and discussion group of approximately a dozen Oxford students.
Professional career
Before graduating from college, Buttigieg was an investigative intern at WMAQ-TV, Chicago's NBC News affiliate. He also interned for Democrat Jill Long Thompson during her unsuccessful 2002 congressional bid.After college, Buttigieg worked on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign as a policy and research specialist for several months in Arizona and New Mexico. From 2004 to 2005, Buttigieg was conference director of the Cohen Group. In 2006, he lent assistance to Joe Donnelly's successful congressional campaign.
After earning his Oxford degree, in 2007, Buttigieg became a consultant at the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company, where he worked on energy, retail, economic development, and logistics for three years. His clients at McKinsey included the health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; electronics retailer Best Buy; Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws; two nonprofit environmentalist groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Energy Foundation; and several U.S. government agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department, Defense Department, and Postal Service. He took a leave of absence from McKinsey in 2008 to become research director for Jill Long Thompson's unsuccessful campaign for Indiana governor. His work at McKinsey included trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, which he rarely discusses. Buttigieg left McKinsey in 2010 in order to focus full-time on his campaign for Indiana state treasurer.
Buttigieg has been involved with the Truman National Security Project since 2005 and serves as a fellow with expertise in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was named to the organization's board of advisors in 2014.
Military service
Buttigieg joined the U.S. Navy Reserve through the direct commission officer program and was sworn in as an ensign in naval intelligence in September 2009. He took a seven-month leave during his mayoral term to deploy to Afghanistan in 2014. While there, Buttigieg was part of a unit assigned to identify and disrupt terrorist finance networks. Part of this was done at Bagram Air Base, but he was also an armed driver for his commander on more than 100 trips into Kabul, where he was tasked with watching out for ambushes and explosive devices along the roads and ensuring that the vehicle was guarded. Buttigieg has jokingly referred to this role as "military Uber". Also, while deployed in Afghanistan, Buttigieg was assigned to the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, a counterterrorism unit that targeted Taliban insurgency financing. Buttigieg was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal. He left the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2017.Indiana state treasurer election
Buttigieg was the Democratic nominee for state treasurer of Indiana in 2010. He received 37.5 percent of the vote, losing to Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock. Much of Buttigieg's campaign had focused on criticizing Mourdock for investing state pension funds in Chrysler junk bonds, and for having subsequently filed a lawsuit against Chrysler's bankruptcy restructuring, which Buttigieg argued imperiled Chrysler jobs in the state of Indiana.Mayor of South Bend
First term
Buttigieg ran for the Democratic nomination for mayor of South Bend in 2011. In a PBS Michiana – WNIT broadcast, he expressed his desire to reinvigorate South Bend, especially with respect to job creation and education. Buttigieg campaigned on other issues, such as pursuing international investment, increasing presence of police and other safety professionals, and improving city services. Buttigieg won his primary election against four opponents on May 3, 2011, receiving 7,663 votes. Buttigieg was elected mayor of South Bend in the November 2011 general election with 10,991 of the 14,883 votes cast, or 74 percent of all votes. He defeated Republican nominee Norris W. Curry Jr. and Libertarian nominee Patrick M. Farrell. Buttigieg took office in January 2012 at the age of 29, becoming the second-youngest mayor in South Bend history and the youngest incumbent mayor, at the time, of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents.After a federal investigation ruled that South Bend police had illegally recorded telephone calls of several officers, Buttigieg demoted police chief Darryl Boykins in 2012. Buttigieg also dismissed the department's communications director, who had discovered the recordings but continued to record the line at Boykins's command. The police communications director alleged that the recordings captured four senior police officers making racist remarks and discussing illegal acts.
Buttigieg has written that his "first serious mistake as mayor" came shortly after taking office in 2012, when he decided to ask for Boykins's resignation. Backed by supporters and legal counsel, Boykins requested reinstatement. When Buttigieg denied his request, Boykins, as the city's first African American police chief, sued the city for racial discrimination, arguing that the taping policy had existed under previous police chiefs, who were white. Buttigieg settled the lawsuits brought by Boykins and the four officers out of court for over $800,000. A federal judge ruled in 2015 that Boykins's recordings violated the Federal Wiretap Act. Buttigieg came under pressure from political opponents to release the eight tapes, but he said that it was not possible to release seven of them, citing the Federal Wiretap Act. It was unclear if releasing the eighth tape would violate any laws. St. Joseph County Superior Court Judge Steve Hostetler heard a case for the release of five cassette tapes. Judge Hostetler ruled that the cassette tapes must be released to the South Bend City Council in May 2021.
As mayor, Buttigieg promoted a number of development and redevelopment projects. Buttigieg was a leading figure behind the creation of a nightly laser-light display along downtown South Bend's St.Joseph River trail as public art. The project cost $700,000, which was raised from private funds. The "River Lights" installation was unveiled in May 2015 as part of the city's 150th anniversary celebrations. He also oversaw the city's launching of a 3-1-1 system in 2013. Buttigieg's administration oversaw the sale of numerous city-owned properties. One of Buttigieg's signature programs was the "Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative". Known locally as 1,000 Properties in 1,000 Days, it was a project to repair or demolish blighted properties across South Bend. The program reached its goal two months before its scheduled end date in November 2015. By the thousandth day of the program, before Buttigieg's first term ended, nearly 40 percent of the targeted houses were repaired, and 679 were demolished or under contract for demolition. Buttigieg took note of the fact that many homes within communities of color were the ones demolished, leading to early distrust between the city and these communities.
While mayor, Buttigieg served for seven months in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, returning to the United States on September 23, 2014. In his absence, Deputy Mayor Mark Neal, South Bend's city comptroller, served as executive from February 2014 until Buttigieg returned to his role as mayor in October 2014.
In 2015, during the controversy over Indiana Senate Bill 101the original version of which was widely criticized for allowing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender peopleButtigieg emerged as a leading opponent of the legislation. Amid his reelection campaign, he came out as gay and expressed his solidarity with the LGBTQ community.