Pete Buttigieg Biography / Who is Pete Buttigieg?

Pete Buttigieg is an American politician and former U.S. Navy officer who served as the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana. On April 14, 2019, he officially announced he was running for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in the 2020 United States presidential election and suspended his campaign in March 2020.

From 2007 to 2010, Buttigieg was a consultant at the management consulting firm McKinsey. He was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant from 2009 to 2017. In 2014, Buttigieg was mobilized and deployed to Afghanistan for seven months.

Prior to running for office, he worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, John Kerry, and Joe Donnelly. From January 2012 to January 2020, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, earning him the nickname “Mayor Pete”. In 2015, he came out as gay. Buttigieg became the first openly gay person to launch a major presidential campaign.

Pete Buttigieg Education

Pete attended St. Joseph High School where he graduated in 2000. In his senior year at St. Joseph’s High School, Buttigieg was honored by Caroline Kennedy and other members of President Kennedy’s family during a May 22, 2000, ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library for his prize-winning essay for the JFK Profiles in Courage Essay Contest.

His winning essay centered on the integrity and political courage demonstrated by U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of his nation’s only Independent members of Congress. Buttigieg was also selected as one of two Indiana delegates to the United States Senate Youth Program.

He then attended Harvard College, where he was president of the Harvard Institute of Politics Student Advisory Committee and worked on the Institute’s annual study of youth attitudes on politics. He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in History and Literature and writing his thesis on the influence of puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as reflected in the Graham Greene novel The Quiet American. In 2007, Buttigieg received a first-class honors degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Pete Buttigieg career

Before graduating from college, Pete worked as an investigative intern at WMAQ-TV, Chicago’s NBC news affiliate. He also worked as an intern for Jill Long Thompson’s 2002 congressional campaign, and later served as an adviser to her 2008 gubernatorial campaign.

From 2004 to 2005, he worked in Washington, D.C., as conference director for former United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen’s international strategic consulting firm, The Cohen Group. Buttigieg also spent some months working on Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, where he was a policy and research specialist.

After graduating from Oxford, Buttigieg worked as a consultant at McKinsey and Company, a management strategy consulting firm, from 2007 through 2010. In 2010, Buttigieg was the Democratic Party candidate for State Treasurer of Indiana. He lost to incumbent Richard Mourdock, garnering 37.5% of the vote.

Pete Buttigieg Age

Buttigieg is 98 years old as of 2021. He was born as Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg on January 19, 1982, in South Bend, Indiana, United States.

Pete Buttigieg Height

Buttigieg stands at a height of 6 feet 0 inches tall.

Pete Buttigieg Family

Buttigieg is the son of Joseph Buttigieg and Jennifer Ann (née Montgomery). His mother is a many-generations Hoosier, and his father, Joseph, was an immigrant from Ħamrun, Malta. His mother was a professor at Notre Dame for 29 years, while his father had initially studied to be a Jesuit priest before immigrating to the United States and embarking on a secular career as a professor of literature at The University of Notre Dame at South Bend.

Buttigieg’s father died on January 27, 2019, after an illness. Buttigieg announced the passing of his father in a heartfelt statement posted to his Facebook page. “We are in mourning today. Dad passed away peacefully earlier this afternoon. As a friend, colleague, thinker, and educator, he touched countless lives, and we hope to find a way to honor his impact later on in the spring. The last thing he said to us was, “it’s been a good trip.” So it has. We love you, Dad,” wrote Mayor Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg Husband / Wedding

On June 16, 2015, Pete announced in an essay that he is gay, thus becoming the first openly gay municipal executive in Indiana. On December 28, 2017, he announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, and on June 16, 2018, they were married in a private ceremony at the Cathedral of St. James’ Episcopal Church in downtown South Bend.

He is a member of The Episcopal Church. The two live in the same South Bend neighborhood where Buttigieg grew up, with their two rescue dogs, Truman and Buddy. As of April 2019, Chasten also uses the last name, Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg Religion

Pete is a devout Christian, and he has said his faith has had a strong influence on his life. Although his parents had him baptized a Roman Catholic as an infant in deference to his deeply religious Maltese relatives, and although he was sent to Catholic schools, his parents were infrequent churchgoers.

While at Oxford, he began to attend Christ Church Cathedral and says he felt “more-or-less Anglican” by the time he returned to South Bend. St. Augustine, Garry Wills, and James Martin are among his religious influences. A member of the Episcopal Church, Pete is a congregant at the Cathedral of St. James in downtown South Bend.

Pete Buttigieg Net Worth / Pete Buttigieg Salary

Pete has an estimated net worth of $250,000. His salary as mayor of South Bend is $104,847 per year, according to www.indystar.com.

Pete Buttigieg Book

Buttigieg’s book, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future was published on February 12, 2019. It’s about an inspirational story of a Midwest city that has become nothing less than a blueprint for the future of American renewal.

Pete Buttigieg New York Times

In 2016, The New York Times published an op-ed praising Buttigieg’s work as mayor and boldly asking in the headline if he could eventually be elected as “the first gay president.”

Pete Buttigieg Military service

In 2009, Buttigieg was commissioned as a Naval intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve and deployed to Afghanistan in 2013. After a seven-month deployment, he returned to South Bend. Buttigieg remains a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve.

Pete Buttigieg Mayor of South Bend

First term

Pete was elected mayor of South Bend in November 2011, with 74% of the vote. In January 2012, he took office at age 29, becoming the second-youngest mayor in South Bend history (Schuyler Colfax III became mayor at age 28 in 1898) and the youngest mayor of a U.8S. city with at least 100,000 residents.

In 2012, he demoted South Bend police chief Darryl Boykins after a federal investigation found that the police department had improperly recorded telephone calls. Pete also fired the police department’s communications director, who had “discovered the recordings but continued to record the line at Boykins’ command”.

The police communications director alleged that the recordings captured four senior police officers making racist remarks and discussing illegal acts.
Pete opted to settle suits brought by Boykins, the communications director, and the four officers out of court.

In 2015, a federal judge ruled that Boykins’s recordings violated the Federal Wiretap Act. He came under pressure from political opponents to release the tapes but said that doing so would be a violation of the Wiretap Act. Buttigieg called for the eradication of racial bias in the police force. An Indiana court is currently hearing a case for the release of the tapes.

He was named mayor of the year for 2013 by GovFresh.com, tying with third-term New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. In 2014, Buttigieg was called “the most interesting mayor you’ve never heard of” based on his youth, education, and military background by The Washington Post.

In 2016, Frank Bruni a New York Times columnist published a column praising his work as mayor with a headline asking if he might be “the first gay president”. One of Pete’s signature programs has been the “Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative” (known locally as “1,000 Properties in 1,000 Days”), a project to repair or demolish blighted properties across the city. The goal was reached by the program’s scheduled end date in November 2015.

Pete served for seven months in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserves, returning to the United States on September 23, 2014. While deployed, Buttigieg was assigned to the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, a counterterrorism unit that targeted Taliban insurgency financing. In Buttigieg’s absence, Deputy Mayor Mark Neal, South Bend’s city controller, served in the role of the executive, from February 2014 until Pete returned to his role as mayor in October 2014.

Second term

Pete announced that he would seek a second term in 2014, which he went on to win the Democratic primary with 78% of the vote, defeating Henry Davis, Jr., the city councilman from the 2nd District. In November 2015, Buttigieg was elected to his second term as mayor of South Bend with over 80% of the vote, defeating Republican Kelly Jones.

During the 2015 controversy over Indiana Senate Bill 101, the original version of which was widely criticized for allowing discrimination against LGBT people—Pete emerged as a leading opponent of the legislation, and shortly afterward came out as gay to express his solidarity.

In 2013, Buttigieg proposed a “Smart Streets” urban development program to improve South Bend’s downtown area, and in early 2015 he secured a bond issue for the program backed by tax increment financing. “Smart Streets” was aimed at improving economic development and urban vibrancy as well as road safety.

The project involved the conversion of one-way streets downtown to two-way streets, the widening of sidewalks, traffic calming measures, streetside beautification (including the planting of trees and installation of decorative brickwork), the addition of bike lanes, and the introduction of roundabouts. Elements of the project were finished in 2016, and it was officially completed in 2017. The project was credited with spurring private development in the city.

As mayor, Pete was a leading figure behind the creation of a nightly laser lighting display along downtown South Bend’s St. Joseph River trail as public art. The project cost $700,000, which was raised from private funds. In May 2015, the “River Lights” installation was unveiled, as part of the city’s 150th-anniversary celebrations.

Under Buttigieg, South Bend launched a $50 million investment in the city’s parks, many of which had been neglected during the preceding decades. In December 2018, he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend.

Pete Buttigieg 2017 DNC chair election

On January 5, 2017, Pete Buttigieg announced his candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee in its 2017 chairmanship election. He “built a national profile as an emerging dark horse in the race for the chairmanship with the backing of former DNC Chairman Howard Dean.” He “campaigned on the idea that the aging Democratic Party needed to empower its millennial members.” Buttigieg withdrew from the race on the day of the election, in his nomination speech.

Pete Buttigieg 2020 presidential election

On January 23, 2019, Pete announced that he was creating an exploratory committee for candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 election. He is seeking the Democratic nomination. If elected, Buttigieg would be the youngest and the first openly LGBT American president. On April 14, 2019, Buttigieg officially launched his campaign in South Bend.

He describes himself as a proponent of democratically influenced capitalism. Buttigieg favors universal healthcare with retention of private insurance; universal background checks for firearms purchases; dialogue and cooperation between the Democratic Party and organized labor; and environment policies that address pollution and fight climate change, which he views as “a security issue”.

Buttigieg also supports federal legislation banning discrimination against LGBT people and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for immigrants. He self-identifies as a progressive and a supporter of democratic capitalism. He identifies regulatory capture as a significant problem in American society.

Pete Buttigieg Policies

Buttigieg’s campaign website is missing a policy section — an omission that CNN’s Anderson Cooper pointed out is glaring after Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in particular, had delved deep into policy specifics earlier Monday night. Buttigieg responded that while the policy is important, Democrats need to communicate their values without drowning voters in “minutiae.”

“I’ve been pretty clear where I stand on major issues,” he said, citing “Medicare for All” as an example. “We’ll continue to roll out specific policy proposals, too,” he said. “But I also think it’s important we don’t drown people in minutiae before we’ve vindicated the values that animate our policies. We go right to the policy proposals and we expect people to be able to figure out what our values must be from that.”

“I expect it will be very easy to tell where I stand on every policy issue of our time. But I’m going to take time to lay that out, rather than competing strictly on the theoretical elements of the proposals themselves,” he said.

Buttigieg also said he planned to soon unveil a tool that would make it possible for people to pull up videos of him discussing specific policies and issues by entering a search word or phrase on his website. Minutes later, that feature was live. “We’re in the second week of my campaign being official and we’ll continue building our website accordingly, too.”

Pete Buttigieg Honors and Awards

Buttigieg was named a 2014 Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow. In 2015, he was named a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Fenn Award.

The table below answers some of the frequently asked questions about Buttigieg.