Pete Buttigieg Poised to Formally Enter 2020 Democratic Field

(Bloomberg) -- Mayor Pete Buttigieg, an underdog in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race who’s seen an uptick in his support in recent weeks, is poised to formally enter the contest on Sunday during an event in the city he runs, South Bend, Indiana.

Buttigieg, 37, is scheduled to headline a rally at approximately 2 p.m. local time. The gathering was originally scheduled to be held outside, but has been moved indoors because of a forecast for a late-season winter storm.

He’ll become the 18th Democratic candidate to formally enter the race and would be the youngest and first openly gay U.S. president, if elected.

With a name that’s challenging to pronounce (boot-edge-edge; but the candidate’s own husband has offered alternatives, including Buddha-judge), the northern Indiana mayor has been traveling through early primary and caucus states and sitting for just about any television interview he can find. He’s held his current post since 2012 and oversees a community of about 102,000 people known for the University of Notre Dame.

Trump’s Opposite

A Rhodes scholar who speaks seven languages, Buttigieg has sold himself as the polar opposite of President Donald Trump. He’s reported raising about $7 million during the first quarter. That puts him roughly in the middle of the pack among those who have shared numbers ahead of Monday’s Federal Election Commission disclosure deadline.

Recent polls in the first two states that will hold Democratic nomination contests early next year -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- showed a surge in support for Buttigieg, even as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont remain the front-runners.

A Monmouth University Poll of Iowa Democratic voters released on April 11 shows Biden, who’s expected to enter the race this month, with the support of 27 percent of those who say they’re likely to attend the state’s caucuses in February. He’s followed by Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, at 16 percent. Buttigieg ranked third at 9 percent, outperforming a slew of U.S. senators and other hopefuls.

Red-State Resume

Meanwhile, a poll by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics showed similar results, with Biden at 23 percent, Sanders at 16 percent and Buttigieg at 11 percent.

Buttigieg has suggested his strengths as a potential Democratic nominee include executive experience running a city, his military background -- he served eight years in the Navy Reserve, including a six-month stint as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan -- and growing up in solidly Republican Indiana, albeit in a college town.

He supports some of the progressive proposals that have surfaced in the Democratic primary race, such as expanding the Supreme Court and doing away with the Electoral College. But he’s kept some distance from others, such as “Medicare for all” and a guaranteed income for the working class.

“Anyone in politics who lets the words Medicare for all escape their lips also has a responsibility to explain how we could actually get there,” Buttigieg said during a recent appearance on a CNN town hall. He added that a preferable path might be “a Medicare for all who want it set up.”

An Episcopalian who often quotes scripture, Buttigieg married his husband, Chasten, a junior high school teacher, in a church service in June that was chronicled by the New York Times.

Pointing to South Bend’s crime and urban blight, Republicans sought to tarnish Buttigieg’s image as mayor.

“Pete Buttigieg talks a good game, but the facts of his failed leadership in South Bend will eventually catch up with the hysteria surrounding his candidacy,” Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party, said in a statement ahead of Sunday’s event.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.