Lets get buttigieg to quit lgbtq bag
Pete Buttigieg vs Donald Trump? Don't rule out this gay millennial mayor just yet
Pete Buttigieg is exactly who US political reporters want to write about.
He is not Donald Trump, for one thing. Nor is he Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
One of a bloated (and still swelling) field of democratic 2020 contenders, Mr Buttigieg suggestions bored journalists a fresh face and a recent name.
Yet there's more to his narrative.
If Mr Buttigieg was to be elected, he'd be the first to go from mayor to president — and the Mayor of a town roughly the size of Ballarat to boot.
He would be the youngest president and the first millennial, stepping into the office at age 39.
He'd be the first openly gay president.
Oh, and did we mention he's also the underdog? Or at least he was. The media's fascination with Mr Buttigieg has, in spin, fuelled support for his candidacy.
He went from polling at less than 1 per cent in February to hovering around 10 per cent in delayed April.
For reference, Joe Biden has consistently held the top spot around 29 per cent. Two mention polls have seen Mr Buttigieg creep up into third.
He is generating intense online search i
Pete Buttigieg opens up about coming out in chat with Rachel Maddow
Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has spoken about the challenges of coming out as lgbtq+, opening up during an interview with openly gay NBC political commentator Rachel Maddow.
Buttigieg, the Mayor of Southbend, Indiana, was approaching mayoral re-election in 2015 when he penned a moving op-ed for the local newspaper, revealing he was gay. He went on to be re-elected with 80 per cent of the vote, an even greater percentage than his first campaign.
“You went through college, and then the Rhodes Scholarship process and getting the Rhodes scholarship and going to work for McKinsey and joining the Navy and deploying to Afghanistan and coming place and running for mayor in your hometown and getting elected before you came out at the age of 33,” Maddow said to Buttigieg on her show Monday night.
“I think it would have killed me to be closeted for that long.”
“It was hard,” replied Buttigieg. “It was really hard.”
Maddow, the first openly gay Rhodes scholar, continued: “Coming out is hard, but being in the closet is harder."
Buttigie
New Hampshire: Why young ex-mayor Buttigieg is surging
Still, flush with money, the Buttigieg operation in New Hampshire has all the trappings of a slickly produced campaign that's built to win. Eye-popping blue and yellow yard signs touting "Mayor Pete" dot the landscape throughout this snow-covered state. His adverts, dense on positivity and inspirational messaging, blanket the local television stations. At a multi-candidate dinner/rally held by the state's Democratic Party on Saturday night, Buttigieg supporters - vocal and organised - appeared to be the largest contingent in attendance.
In this Unused England state - favor Iowa before it, predominantly white and largely rural - it feels favor Buttigieg is approaching breakaway speed. A look at national polls and those of the states holding primaries in the weeks to come, however, coat a decidedly different picture.
The modern Democratic Party electorate does not look appreciate New Hampshire or Iowa. It's much more diverse and much more urban. Surveys of Nevada and South Carolina show Buttigieg languishing a distant fifth. Nationally, he's in the high single digits, as billionaire Michael Bloomberg, po