South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a breakout star of the 2020 campaign, formally launched his presidential bid on Sunday with a criticism of President
Donald Trump's vision for the future of America.
'My name is Pete Buttigieg. They call me Mayor Pete. I am a proud son of South Bend, Indiana. And I am running for President of the United States,' he announced to a roaring crowd in his home town.
Buttigieg, in his announcement address, tied his presidential bid to the recovery of South Bend, a touting of his 10 years as mayor of the city.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a breakout star of the 2020 campaign, formally launched his presidential bid
Buttigieg would be the first openly gay man elected president
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg joins 2020 presidential race
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He gave his remarks in Studebaker Building 84, a building that closed during the economic down turn in 1963, and used the symbolism of its regrowth heavily in his remarks.
'I ran for mayor in 2011 knowing that nothing like Studebaker would ever come back - but believing that we would, our city would, if we had the courage to reimagine our future. And now, I can confidently say that South Bend is back,' he said.
'And that’s why I’m here today. To tell a different story than “Make America Great Again.” Because there is a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities: the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back,' he said.
'It comes from people who think the only way to reach communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia, selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised to begin with. The problem is, they’re telling us to look for greatness in all the wrong places,' he added.
'Because if there is one thing the city of South Bend has shown, it’s that there is no such thing as an honest politics that revolves around the word “again.” It’s time to walk away from the politics of the past, and toward something totally different. So that’s why I’m here today, joining you to make a little news,' he said as the crowd roared.
The old Studebaker auto plant underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation led by a private developer with help from state grants and financing from South Bend. The newly remodeled structure is now part of a mixed-use technology center outside the city's downtown. It was filled to capacity at Buttigieg's remarks.
Supporters shouted 'Pete' and 'Buttigieg' during his remarks. They waved green 'Pete 2020' signs and yellow 'Boot-Edge-Edge' signs, which showed how to pronounce the mayor's last name.
Supporters wait for Mayor Pete Buttigieg's remarks
Several supporters wore Pete t-shirts
Buttigieg slammed the 'horror show' in Washington politics today
Buttigieg's remarks were a combination of hope for the future with one-liners decrying the current state of American politics.
He slammed the 'horror show' in Washington politics today.
'The horror show in Washington is mesmerizing, all-consuming. But starting today, we are going to change the channel,' he said.
He acknowledged his young age and lack of national political credentials in the crowded Democratic field of 18 contenders.
'I recognize the audacity of doing this as a Midwestern millennial mayor. More than a little bold - at age 37 - to seek the highest office in the land,' he said.
But, he argued, it's time for a change.
'If America today feels like a confusing place to be, it’s because we’re on one of those blank pages in between chapters. Change is coming, ready or not. The question of our time is whether families and workers will be defeated by the changes beneath us or whether we will master them and make them work toward a better everyday life for us all,' he said.
'Such a moment calls for hopeful and audacious voices from communities like ours,' he added.
Buttigieg, 37, would also be the youngest elected president
He shook hands with supporters after his addess
A Buttigieg supporter wears a decorated hat
He argued that freedom means the right to health care, consumer protection, cyber security, racial security, and freedom to marry.
'The chance to live a life of your choosing, in keeping with your values: that is freedom in its richest sense,' he said.
He slammed several Trump policies, including climate change and the president's call to build a border wall against illegal immigrants.
'We are here to say there's a lot more to security than putting up a wall from sea to shining sea,' he said. 'And to those in charge of our border policy, I want to make this clear: the greatest nation in the world should have nothing to fear from children fleeing violence.'
He also called for the end of the electoral college, a call that has gained steamed after Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the electoral college vote to Trump.
'We can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime, the Electoral College has overruled the American people,' he said referring to the 2016 and 2000 presidential elections.
'So let’s make it easier to register and to vote; let’s make our districts fairer, our courts less political, our structures more inclusive; and yes let’s pick our president by counting up all the ballots and giving it to the woman or man who got the most votes!,' he said.
Buttigieg thanked his husband Chasten Buttigieg and his family for their support.
'Thanks to my Mom who is here physically and my Dad who is here in more way than he could have imagined. And Chasten, my love, ... for giving me the strength to do this and the grounding to be myself as we go,' Buttigieg, whose father died in January.
He made several references to his husband and his marriage in his remarks. Chasten Buttigieg, a school teacher, has become a social media star in his own right as he has campaigned across the country with his husband.
The two men embraced after Buttigieg's announcement and then greeted supporters together.
'Our marriage exists by the grace of a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nine men and women sat down in a room and took a vote and they brought me the most important freedom in my life,' Pete Buttigieg said.
'Politics matters because it hits home. It hits home at our most vulnerable moments,' he said.
South Bend's Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten Buttigieg embrace after his presidential announcement
Both Buttigiegs' have become national stars and embraced by young Democrats around the country
Buttigieg hits out at VP Pence over homosexuality being moral issue
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He said if he could go back in time he would reassure his teenage self he would be okay.
He said he'd 'tell him he’ll be all right. More than all right. To tell him that one rainy April day, before he even turns forty, he’ll wake up to headlines about whether he’s rising too quickly as he becomes a top-tier contender for the American presidency. And to tell him that on that day he announces his campaign for president, he’ll do it with his husband looking on.'
He added: 'How can you live that story and not believe that America deserves our optimism, deserves our courage, deserves our hope.'
He told the roaring crowd: 'If you and I rise together to meet this moment, one day they will write histories, not just about one campaign or one presidency but about the era that began here today in this building where past, present, and future meet, right here this chilly day in South Bend.'
The 37-year-old Rhodes Scholar and Afghanistan War veteran made the announcement in the town of roughly 100,000 where he grew up.
Before he spoke to supporters in Studebaker Building 84, he addressed the overflow crowd outside in the rain, unable to get into the packed area.
Buttigieg was introduced by Mayor Steve Adler of Austin, Texas. And he had two other mayors speak in the runup to his remarks. But Adler's presence was notable given Texas has two of its own running for president in the crowded field of 18 contenders: Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro.
Buttigieg will campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire this week
Buttigieg stock rose as a candidate with his attacks on President Trump
He will return this week to Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the nation's first nominating contests, to campaign as a full-fledged candidate.
His national attention grew with his willingness to take on President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence (who was governor of Indiana while Buttigieg was mayor), and their administration.
A town hall meeting at South by Southwest in March - where he called out Pence, an evangelic Christian, for serving in the 'porn star presidency' - pushed him into the national spotlight.
It's not the first time he was tough on Trump administration.
When Buttigieg ran for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017, he called Trump a 'draft-dodging chickenhawk.'
'I'll be damned if we're going to have a draft-dodging chickenhawk president of the United States - who thinks he's too smart to read his own intelligence briefings - ordering the people I served with back into another conflict because he can't be bothered to do his job properly,' he said at a forum in Baltimore.
He has shot up to third space in many of the polls, trailing former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
His campaign has raised more than $7 million in the first three months of this year - more than Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker.
Buttigieg would be the first openly gay nominee of a major presidential party; he married his husband, Chasten, last year.
Buttigieg and Chasten Buttigieg have become social media stars and embraced by Democrats - particularly the younger crowd - as they hit the campaign trial.
'I really don't mind sharing him on the trail because I'm really enjoying watching people fall in love with him,' Chasten Buttigieg told DailyMail.com at a fundraiser for his husband in Washington D.C. earlier this month.
The mayor - known as Mayor Pete due to the difficulty people have in pronouncing his last name - got into a heated back and forth with Pence last week over his sexuality and the vice president's faith.
Buttigieg said earlier this month that if the vice president is mad at people for being gay, it's God he should actually be angry at.
'If me being gay was a choice it was a choice made far, far above my pay grade,' he told the LGBTQ Victory Fund event in Washington D.C.
'And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator,' he added.
Pence shot back, saying the mayor 'knows better' than to criticize his faith and charging him with trying to win points with progressives.
'He said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally. And he knows better. He knows me,' Pence, who has a long history of opposing gay rights, told
CNBC.
Pence argued Buttigieg was trying to rally the liberal left to his side in the crowded field for the Democratic presidential nomination with his criticism.
'But I get it. You know, it's look, again, 19 people running for president on that side in a party that's sliding off to the left. And they're all competing with one another for how much more liberal they can be,' Pence said.
Buttigieg, a graduate of Harvard, speaks seven foreign languages - Norwegian, Arabic, Spanish, Maltese, Dari, French, and Italian. He has two rescue dogs with his husband and plays the piano.
He would be the first mayor to go directly to the White House.
And he would be the youngest person to become president, turning 39 the day before the next inauguration, on Jan. 20, 2021.
Husband of Mayor Pete Buttigieg takes the spotlight
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Mayor Pete Buttigieg (right) and his husband Chasten Buttigieg (left) got married last year
Buttigieg became a breakout star at a town hall meeting at South by Southwest in March
Buttigieg came out as gay during his June 2015 mayoral re-election campaign, which he went on to win with 78 percent of the vote.
Earlier this month, he dove into more personal terms about what being gay and his marriage to Chasten, a school teacher, means to him.
'When I was younger I would do anything to not be gay,' he told the crowd at the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a political PAC dedicated to increasing the number of openly LGBT public officials in the U.S.
'If you had offered me a pill to make me straight I would have swallowed it before you had time to give me a sip of water,' he said, adding 'It's a hard thing to think about now.'
'It's hard to face the truth there were times in my life when you had shown me exactly what it was inside me that made me gay I would have cut it out with a knife,' he noted.
But he said out of the pain of those early years became joy in the form of his marriage.
'The best thing in my life - my marriage – might not never have happened at all,' he said.
'My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man and, yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God,' he added.
Buttigieg was raised Catholic but has become a devout Episcopalian.
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