Buttigieg's sexuality didn't stop South Bend voters from re-electing him to a second term with more than 80 percent of the vote.Īll that success didn't go unnoticed. Less than a year later, Buttigieg came out as gay. While still serving his first term, Buttigieg took a seven-month leave of office to serve with the Naval Reserve in Afghanistan in 2015. The son of an immigrant father from Malta, Buttigieg graduated from Harvard, earned a Rhodes Scholarship, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey before moving back home to Indiana at age 29 to become the mayor of South Bend, making him the youngest mayor of a city with more than 100,000 people. Buttigieg himself suggests "BOOT-edge-edge" himself, or just "Mayor Pete."Īnd while he hasn't held the sort of positions that usually qualify people for the presidency, like senator, governor, general, or multiple-bankrupt Twitterscreamy reality show figurehead, Buttigieg has a top-notch résumé, as 538 notes: This election really needs moments like NBC's Katy Tur pronouncing his last name "bootie judge" earlier today (source: Evan in the ChatCave). We are all for Pete Buttigieg, even though even he has to know he isn't a top-tier candidate (mayors don't get to be president, it's a rule). He's not even the first mayor to declare for the top job this year that honor goes to former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro. He's also the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate, so that's nifty, if only as an opportunity for Donald Trump to needle Mike Pence about how Pence will probably want to murder him, ha-ha. Yr Wonkette thinks he's swell! Dude is 37, so he's legal to be president (if elected, he'd take the "youngest president" prize right away from that old geezer Teddy Roosevelt, who was 42 when inaugurated). Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, announced today that he too is running for president, bringing the Democratic primary field to approximately the same size of his small Midwestern city.