1. 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.
124 Facts About Pete Buttigieg
1. 2.
Pete Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oxford, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship.
3.
Pete Buttigieg was mobilized and deployed to the War in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014.
4.
Pete Buttigieg married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher and writer, in June 2018.
5.
Pete Buttigieg ran in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, launching his campaign for the 2020 presidential election on April 14,2019.
6.
Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay man to launch a Democratic presidential campaign.
7.
Pete Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and placed a close second in the New Hampshire primary.
8.
Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race on March 1,2020, and endorsed Joe Biden the following day.
9.
Pete Buttigieg was born on January 19,1982, in South Bend, Indiana, to Jennifer "Anne" Montgomery and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II.
10.
Pete Buttigieg's parents met and married while employed as faculty at New Mexico State University.
11.
Pete Buttigieg's father embarked on a career as a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend.
12.
Pete Buttigieg's mother taught at the University of Notre Dame for 29 years.
13.
Pete Buttigieg was valedictorian of the class of 2000 at StJoseph High School in South Bend.
14.
Pete Buttigieg traveled to Boston where he accepted the award and met Caroline Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy family.
15.
In 2000, Pete 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 US Senate and the Hearst Foundations.
16.
Pete Buttigieg 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.
17.
Pete Buttigieg was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford.
18.
Pete Buttigieg interned for Democrat Jill Long Thompson during her unsuccessful 2002 congressional bid.
19.
From 2004 to 2005, Pete Buttigieg was conference director of the Cohen Group.
20.
Pete Buttigieg took a leave of absence from McKinsey in 2008 to become research director for Jill Long Thompson's unsuccessful campaign for Indiana governor.
21.
Pete Buttigieg left McKinsey in 2010 in order to focus full-time on his campaign for Indiana state treasurer.
22.
Pete Buttigieg has been involved with the Truman National Security Project since 2005 and serves as a fellow with expertise in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
23.
Pete Buttigieg was named to the organization's board of advisors in 2014.
24.
Pete Buttigieg joined the US Navy Reserve through the direct commission officer program and was sworn in as an ensign in naval intelligence in September 2009.
25.
Pete Buttigieg took a seven-month leave during his mayoral term to deploy to Afghanistan in 2014.
26.
Pete Buttigieg has jokingly referred to this role as "military Uber".
27.
Also, while deployed in Afghanistan, Pete Buttigieg was assigned to the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, a counterterrorism unit that targeted Taliban insurgency financing.
28.
Pete Buttigieg was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal, and he left the US Navy Reserve in 2017.
29.
Pete Buttigieg was the Democratic nominee for state treasurer of Indiana in 2010.
30.
Pete Buttigieg received 37.5 percent of the vote, losing to Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock.
31.
Much of Pete 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 Pete Buttigieg argued imperiled Chrysler jobs in the state of Indiana.
32.
Pete Buttigieg ran for the Democratic nomination for mayor of South Bend in 2011.
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Pete Buttigieg campaigned on other issues, such as pursuing international investment, increasing presence of police and other safety professionals, and improving city services.
34.
Pete Buttigieg won his primary election against four opponents on May 3,2011, receiving 7,663 votes.
35.
Pete 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.
36.
Pete 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 US city with at least 100,000 residents.
37.
Pete Buttigieg dismissed the department's communications director, who had discovered the recordings but continued to record the line at Boykins's command.
38.
Pete 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.
39.
When Pete 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.
40.
Pete Buttigieg settled the lawsuits brought by Boykins and the four officers out of court for over $800,000.
41.
Pete 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.
42.
Pete Buttigieg was a leading figure behind the creation of a nightly laser-light display along downtown South Bend's StJoseph River trail as public art.
43.
Pete 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.
44.
Pete Buttigieg announced in 2014 that he would seek a second term in 2015.
45.
Pete Buttigieg won the Democratic primary with approximately 78 percent of the vote, defeating Henry Davis Jr.
46.
In 2019, Pete Buttigieg asked for the city to be released from an agreement with the EPA brokered under his mayoral predecessor Steve Luecke, in which South Bend had agreed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in further improvements to its sewer system by 2031.
47.
Pete Buttigieg made it a goal to have the city complete this project by 2025.
48.
Furthermore, under Pete Buttigieg, South Bend invested $50million in the city's parks, many of which had been neglected during the preceding decades.
49.
The local police union accused Pete Buttigieg of making decisions for political gain.
50.
Pete Buttigieg secured $180,000 in November 2019 to commission a review of South Bend's police department policies and practices, to be conducted by Chicago-based consulting firm 21CP Solutions.
51.
Many African Americans point to Pete Buttigieg's firing of Darryl Boykins, South Bend's first black chief of police.
52.
Pete Buttigieg endorsed Democratic nominee Lynn Coleman in that year's election for Indiana's 2nd congressional district, which included South Bend.
53.
Pete Buttigieg later endorsed Mel Hall, Democratic nominee in the 2018 election for Indiana's 2nd congressional district.
54.
Pete Buttigieg campaigned for Joe Donnelly's reelection campaign in the United States Senate election in Indiana.
55.
Pete Buttigieg campaigned for candidates in more than a dozen states, including early presidential primary states such as Iowa and South Carolina, a move indicating potential interest in running for president.
56.
Pete Buttigieg officially announced his run on January 23,2019.
57.
Pete Buttigieg announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend in December 2018.
58.
Pete Buttigieg endorsed James Mueller in the 2019 South Bend mayoral election.
59.
Pete Buttigieg appeared in campaign advertisements for Mueller and donated to Mueller's campaign.
60.
In January 2017, Pete Buttigieg announced his candidacy for chairman of the Democratic National Committee in its 2017 chairmanship election.
61.
Pete Buttigieg built a national profile as an emerging dark horse in the race for the chairmanship with the backing of former DNC chairman Howard Dean, former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, Indiana senator Joe Donnelly, and North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp.
62.
Pete Buttigieg campaigned on the need for the Democratic Party to empower its millennial members.
63.
Pete Buttigieg withdrew from the race on the day of the election without endorsing a candidate, and Perez was elected chairman after two rounds of voting.
64.
On January 23,2019, Pete Buttigieg announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States in the upcoming 2020 election.
65.
Two months later, Pete Buttigieg officially launched his campaign on April 14,2019, in South Bend.
66.
Pete Buttigieg described himself as a progressive and a supporter of democratic capitalism.
67.
Pete Buttigieg identifies regulatory capture as a significant problem in American society.
68.
In early February 2020, Pete Buttigieg led the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses results with 26.2 percent to Bernie Sanders' 26.1 percent, winning 14 delegates to Sanders's 12.
69.
Pete Buttigieg finished second behind Sanders in the New Hampshire primary.
70.
Also, in October 2020, Pete Buttigieg released his second book, Trust: America's Best Chance.
71.
Pete Buttigieg acted as a surrogate for Biden's campaign in the general election.
72.
Pete Buttigieg delivered a speech on the closing night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and announced Indiana's votes during the convention's roll call.
73.
On September 5,2020, Pete Buttigieg was announced to be a member of the advisory council of the Biden-Harris Transition Team that was planning the presidential transition of Joe Biden.
74.
Ahead of the vice presidential debate, Pete Buttigieg played the role as a stand-in for Republican vice president Mike Pence to prepare vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
75.
For example, Pete Buttigieg reinstated an Obama-era pilot program which ensures local hiring for public works projects on May 19,2021, with the goal of helping minorities and disadvantaged individuals.
76.
Pete Buttigieg addressed the African American Mayors Association in late February 2021 to discuss systemic racism.
77.
Pete Buttigieg argued that misguided investments in the federal transport and infrastructure policy had contributed to racial inequity.
78.
In early March 2021, Politico noted that Pete Buttigieg had mentioned racial equity in almost every interview he gave to the press as it related to his work at the department.
79.
In late June 2022, Pete Buttigieg launched a $1 billion Reconnecting Communities pilot program to establish racial equity in roads.
80.
Pete Buttigieg subsequently directed the Department of Transportation to address monopolization and consumer rights in the industry.
81.
Pete Buttigieg created a chief competition officer position in the department.
82.
In March 2023, Pete Buttigieg opposed the proposed merger of Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines as anticompetitive.
83.
On October 30,2024, Pete Buttigieg announced that a rule had taken effect requiring airlines to automatically provide refunds to passengers whose flights are canceled and do not accept another flight, as well as if paid services are not provided.
84.
Pete Buttigieg informed Congress in late March 2021 that the Biden administration was planning to prioritize the construction of the Gateway Rail Tunnel Project due to its economic significance.
85.
Also, Pete Buttigieg has served as a promoter of the American Jobs Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
86.
Early into his tenure, Pete Buttigieg noted that the United States's actions surrounding road traffic safety are lacking and suggested improving the design of roads.
87.
Also, while acknowledging how the United States fell behind other developed countries with respect to bicycle and pedestrian safety, Pete Buttigieg encouraged greater focus on human behavior in infrastructure policy.
88.
Likewise, in March 2021, Pete Buttigieg indicated he was open to tolls on Interstate 80, but not the tollage of bridges, suggesting "big picture solutions" instead, like a mileage tax.
89.
Pete Buttigieg cited high demand and the pandemic as some of the causes for the disruptions, while predicting that the disruptions would "continue into next year".
90.
In March 2023, Pete Buttigieg appeared on CNN, telling the cable news network that he had failed to anticipate the fallout from the derailment and erred in not visiting East Palestine sooner.
91.
In January 2025, news reports emerged that Buttigieg considered a run for US Senate in Michigan, with the announced retirement of US Senator Gary Peters.
92.
In late January 2025, the University of Chicago announced that Pete Buttigieg would be a fellow in their Institute of Politics for the Winter and Spring quarters.
93.
Pete Buttigieg is delivering seminars once a week at Chicago's campus in Hyde Park through early April 2025.
94.
In March 2025, Pete Buttigieg opted not to run for the US Senate in Michigan in 2026, with sources saying that he was instead mulling a run for president in 2028.
95.
Pete Buttigieg favors amending civil rights legislation, including the Federal Equality Act, so that LGBT Americans receive federal non-discrimination protections.
96.
Pete Buttigieg supports expanding opportunities for national service, including a voluntary year of national service for those turning 18 years old.
97.
In July 2019, Pete Buttigieg shared his "Douglass Plan", named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to address systemic racism in America.
98.
Pete Buttigieg supports abolishing the death penalty, moving toward reversing criminal sentences for minor drug-related offenses, and eliminating incarceration for drug possession offenses.
99.
In 2019, Pete Buttigieg called for the United States to decriminalize mental illness and addiction via initiatives such as re-entry programs.
100.
Pete Buttigieg identifies as a democratic capitalist and has decried crony capitalism.
101.
Pete Buttigieg has entertained the possibility of antitrust actions against large technology companies on the basis of privacy and data security concerns.
102.
Pete Buttigieg has proposed tripling Title I funding for schools serving students predominately from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
103.
Pete Buttigieg has opposed free college tuition for all students because he has believed universally free tuition unfairly subsidizes higher-income families at the expense of lower-income individuals who do not attend college.
104.
Pete Buttigieg called for modifying the structure of defense spending, while suggesting that he might favor an overall increase in defense spending.
105.
Pete Buttigieg has said that he believes the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks was justified but supported the planned withdrawal of American troops from the region with a maintained intelligence presence.
106.
In 2008, Pete Buttigieg wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling on the United States to support the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland.
107.
Pete Buttigieg has condemned China for its mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
108.
Pete Buttigieg criticized Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from Syria, which critics say gave Turkey the green light to launch its military offensive against Syrian Kurds.
109.
Pete Buttigieg opposed Republican efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
110.
Pete Buttigieg has spoken favorably of Maryland's all-payer rate setting.
111.
Pete Buttigieg has described Medicare for All Who Want It as inclusive, more efficient than the current system, and a possible precursor or "glide path" to single-payer health insurance.
112.
Pete Buttigieg supports Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and repeatedly criticized the first Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies.
113.
In January 2019, Pete Buttigieg told CBS News that Trump had been "reckless" in sending American troops to the Southern border, calling the decision "a measure of last resort".
114.
Pete Buttigieg is a Christian, and he has said his faith has had a strong influence in his life.
115.
Pete Buttigieg was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant and he attended Catholic schools.
116.
Besides his native English, Pete Buttigieg has some knowledge of Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Dari Persian, and French.
117.
Pete Buttigieg plays guitar and piano, and in 2013 performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra as a guest piano soloist with Ben Folds.
118.
Pete Buttigieg came out as gay in a June 2015 piece in the South Bend Tribune, becoming Indiana's first openly gay elected executive.
119.
Pete Buttigieg was the first elected official in Indiana to come out while in office and the highest elected official in Indiana to come out.
120.
Pete Buttigieg announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher, in a December 14,2017, Facebook post.
121.
Pete Buttigieg announced on August 17,2021, that he and his husband had become parents.
122.
Pete Buttigieg elaborated on September 4,2021, that they had adopted two newborn fraternal twins.
123.
In July 2022, Pete Buttigieg established his permanent residence in Traverse City, Michigan, which is Chasten's hometown, and registered to vote in Michigan.
124.
At the Golden Heart Awards, run by God's Love We Deliver, Pete Buttigieg was awarded the "Golden Heart Award for Outstanding Leadership and Public Service" in October 2019.