Pete Buttigieg

Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is an American Politician and former naval officer who is currently serving as the 19th United States Secretary of Transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indian, from 2012 to 2020 , which earned him the nickname “Mayor Pete”. Pete Buttigieg, in full Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, (born January 19, 1982 , South Bend, Indian, U.S.), American Politician who serves as U.S. secretary of transportation (2021) in administration of pres. Joe Biden. Buttigieg in the first openly gay cabinet member in America history. He previously was mayor (2012–20) of South Bend, Indiana, and he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Encyclopedia Britannica home quizzes & Games History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture Money Videos Pete Buttigieg Home Politics, Law & Government World Leaders Other Politicians History & Society Pete Buttigieg American politician Also known as: Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg Written and fact-checked by Last Updated: Jul 1, 2023 • Article History Recent News Jul. 1, 2023, 10:30 AM ET (AP) Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows Jun. 23, 2023, 6:05 PM ET (AP) Buttigieg warns airlines to finish retrofitting planes to avoid interference from 5G signals.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is warning airlines to be ready when wireless companies power up their 5G service next month
Pete Buttigieg, in full Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, (born January 19, 1982, South Bend, Indiana, U.S.), American politician who serves as U.S. secretary of transportation (2021– ) in the administration of Pres. Joe Biden. Buttigieg is the first openly gay cabinet member in American history. He previously was mayor (2012–20) of South Bend, Indiana, and he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg
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Category: History & Society
Born: January 19, 1982 (age 41) South Bend Indiana
Title / Office: U.S. Department of Transportation (2021-), United States mayor (2012-2020), South Bend
Awards And Honors: Rhodes Scholarship
Education and early career
Both of Buttigieg’s parents were professors at the University of Notre Dame. His father, an immigrant from Malta, taught literature, and his mother taught linguistics. Buttigieg attended Harvard University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature in 2004. He later studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. After earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford’s Pembroke College in 2007, he returned to the United States. For several years Buttigieg worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in Chicago. In 2008 he served as an adviser to Jill Long Thompson, a Democratic candidate in the Indiana gubernatorial race; she lost the election. The following year Buttigieg became an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, serving until 2017.

Mayor of South Bend
Buttigieg first ran for elective office in 2010, losing a bid to become treasurer of Indiana. He quickly rebounded from that defeat, winning election as mayor of South Bend in 2011. At the time he took office in January 2012, Buttigieg was the youngest mayor of an American city with more than 100,000 residents. Because many of his constituents had difficulty pronouncing his last name (“BOOT-edge-edge”), he was widely referred to simply as “Mayor Pete.” During his first term, he carried out an ambitious program to demolish or repair more than 1,000 abandoned houses in South Bend. His “Smart Streets” initiative also transformed the city’s downtown by redesigning its streets and sidewalks, an effort that helped bring hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment to the area. In 2014 Buttigieg took a leave from his mayoral duties to serve a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve. In June 2015 he came out publicly as gay in an essay published in the South Bend Tribune. He later married (2018) Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher.

Buttigieg won reelection by a wide margin in November 2015. During his second term, racial tensions in the city increased, particularly in the wake of the fatal shooting in 2019 of Black resident Eric Logan by a white South Bend police sergeant. Buttigieg was criticized for his oversight of the police department. He later acknowledged that many of his efforts to reform the department, including attempts to recruit more minority police officers, had been unsuccessful. During this time, Buttigieg’s national profile began to rise, and in 2017 he ran for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Although he ultimately dropped out, many pundits viewed him as a rising star in the party. In 2018 he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor the following year; he left office in 2020.In April 2019 Buttigieg entered the 2020 U.S. presidential race, joining a crowded field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. He quickly gained momentum, positioning himself as a political outsider who could bring a fresh perspective to Washington. He called for a significant increase in federal funding for renewable energy development and stronger gun-control laws. He also proposed a new health care plan, summarized by the slogan “Medicare for all who want it.” The plan offered a public alternative to private health insurance while allowing Americans to retain their private coverage if they preferred. In February 2020 Buttigieg narrowly won the delegate count in the Iowa caucuses, becoming the first openly gay candidate to win delegates in a major U.S. political party’s presidential primary. Shortly afterward he placed second in the New Hampshire primary. In contests held later that month, however, Buttigieg lost ground, placing third in the Nevada caucuses and fourth in the South Carolina primary. The poor showings were largely attributed to his limited funds and inability to win the support of Black voters. Buttigieg ended his campaign in early March as Democratic voters began to rally around former U.S. vice president Joe Biden. Buttigieg subsequently endorsed Biden, who defeated Pres. Donald Trump in the November election.

In December 2020 Biden nominated Buttigieg to lead the Department of Transportation (DOT). The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Buttigieg on February 2, 2021, and he was sworn in the following day. Not only was he the first openly gay person to hold a U.S. cabinet post, he also was the youngest person to serve as secretary of transportation. Among his top priorities were plans to rebuild roads, bridges, railways, and other transportation infrastructure across the country. In addition, he sought projects that would increase racial equity. Later in 2021 he was a vocal supporter of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed Congress in November. The legislation provided billions of dollars to DOT.THE CURIOUS MIND of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.
Because Buttigieg, at 41, is an old millennial; because as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he got a first in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), the trademark degree for Labour-party elites of the Tony Blair era; because he worked optimizing grocery-store pricing at McKinsey; because he joined the Navy in hopes of promoting democracy in Afghanistan; because he got gay-married to his partner Chasten in 2018; and because, as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he agitated to bring hipster entrepreneurism and “high-tech investment” to his rust-belt hometown, I had to ask him about neoliberalism, the happy idea that consumer markets and liberal democracy will always expand, and will always expand together. I was also fascinated by the way that Buttigieg, who has long described himself as obsessed with technology and data, has responded to the gendering of tech, and especially green tech, by fearsome culture warriors, including Marjorie Taylor Greene.Buttigieg, whose father was a renowned Marxist scholar, was himself a devotee of Senator Bernie Sanders as a young man. He now recognizes that the persistence of far-right ideology, with its masculinist and antidemocratic preoccupations, is part of the reason that neoliberalism has come undone. Not everyone, it seems, even wants a rising standard of living if it means they have to accept the greater enfranchisement of undesirables, including, of course, women, poor people, Black people, and the usual demons in the sights of the world’s Ted Cruzes and Tucker Carlsons.

He also talked about his faith. Lefties these days are said to be less religious than right-wing evangelicals, but between Buttigieg, whose Episcopalianism grounds his decisionmaking, and his boss, President Joe Biden, whose robust Catholicism drives his sincere effort to revive America’s soul, perhaps a religious left is rising again.Pete Buttigieg, the only child of Jennifer Anne (Montgomery) and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II, was born on January 19, 1982, in South Bend, Indiana. His mother uses the name Anne Montgomery. His parents met and married while employed as faculty at New Mexico State University.
Last name is pronounced “boot-edge-edge.” It is the designation for “poultry” in Maltese, a Semitic language.
He was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana from January 1, 2012 until January 1, 2020.
Announced his candidacy for the 2020 US presidential election in January 2019. He is the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate.
Came out as gay in an essay published in the South Bend Tribune in June 2015.
Served seven months in Afghanistan in the Navy Reserves while also serving as mayor of South Bend.Met his eventual husband Chasten on the dating app Hinge.
Son of Jennifer Ann (Montgomery), a professor, and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II, a literary scholar, professor, and translator. His father was an emigrant from Hamrun, Malta. His mother, whose family is from Indiana and Oklahoma, is of English, Scottish, German, and more distant Swiss-German, Welsh, and Cornish, descent.
Spent several months working on Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, where he specialized in policy.
His father passed away eight days after his 37th birthday.
In November 2016, President Barack Obama included him on a short list of gifted, rising Democrats.
Taught himself Norwegian in order to read Erlend Loe’s “Naïve. Super” in its original language. Later started periodically attending a Norwegian church in Chicago to keep up.
Plays the piano.
He became the first openly gay person to win a presidential nominating contest, as well as the first to win delegates, when he won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2020.
Said to bear a resemblance to Logan Lerman, and also to fictional character Alfred E. Neuman.
Portrayed by Colin Jost on Saturday Night Live (1975). Jost and Buttigieg attended Harvard at the same time and lived in the same dormitory at one point, though they had never spoken directly until Buttigieg interviewed Jost for his podcast in 2020.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation (2021 – present).