Peter Paul Montgomery "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg (born 19 January 1982) was Mayor of South Bend, Indiana from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2020 (succeeding Steve Luecke and preceding James Mueller) and United States Secretary of Transportation from 3 February 2021 (succeeding Elaine Chao).
Biography
Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg was born in South Bend, Indiana in 1982, the son of a Maltese immigrant literature professor at the University of Notre Dame and his American wife. He was valedictorian of his high school class in 2000, and he won an essay contest in which he praised US Senator Bernie Sanders' bravery. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar and worked at the McKinsey and Company consulting firm from 2007 to 2010 and as a US Navy intelligence officer from 2009 to 2017, deploying to Afghanistan in 2014 during the Afghanistan War.
Buttigieg was elected Mayor of South Bend in 2015, and, during his re-election campaign in 2015, he came out as gay. He lost both his 2010 run for State Treasurer and his 2017 bid for Chair of the Democratic National Committee, but, on 14 April 2019, he decided to run for President of the United States. He supported universal healthcare (although allowing the public option), reducing income inequality, environmentalism, better relations with unions, universal background checks for firearms purchases, the Equality Act, an end to gerrymandering, preserving DACA, overturning Citizens United, and abolishing the Electoral College.
Buttigieg was a devout Episcopalian, and, on 27 June 2019, he said that the Republican Party had no right to invoke God in their ideology due to their cruel family separation policies along the US-Mexico border. While Buttigieg became a popular moderate candidate who won the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, his critics (especially supporters of Bernie Sanders) derided him for his "whiteness" and for his lack of African-American support. On 1 March 2020, after placing fourth in the South Carolina primary (failing to win more than 2% of the black vote), Buttigieg dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe Biden.
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