Pete Buttigieg, openly gay Indiana mayor, jumps into presidential 2020 race

Pete Buttigieg

South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg made history Wednesday as the first openly gay elected official person to run for the Office of the President of the United States. Photo: Youtube screen grab.

South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg made history Wednesday as the first openly gay elected official to run for the Office of the President of the United States. Buttigieg also is the first LGBTQ Democrat to run for the highest office in the country.

Buttigieg, 37, officially announced his White House bid in the Democratic 2020 race in a video shared on Twitter. Buttigieg is the ninth Democrat to enter the 2020 presidential primary race. 

In the 1 minute and 47 second video, Buttigieg said he has launched an exploratory committee because “it is a season for boldness and it is time to focus on the future.”


 

INDIANA MAYOR

Buttigieg was 29 in 2011, when he became the youngest mayor of a city having 100,000 residents. Buttigieg received almost 74 percent of the vote.

He is in his second mayoral term, but announced in December that he would not seek a third term.

Civil rights pioneer Bayard Rustin, mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., came out to fight homophobia

COMING OUT, WEDS BOYFRIEND

In June 2015, Buttigieg wrote an essay for the South Bend Tribune where he told the public that he’s gay and explained the importance of coming out. He ended the essay saying that he wanted one day to get married.

Three years later, Buttigieg married his boyfriend, Chasten Glezman, 28. The 45-minute ceremony was live streamed by the church where they we and included readings from majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U. S. Supreme Court case that legalized marriage equality.

MILITARY VETERAN

Buttigieg also is a military veteran. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve from 2009 to 2017.

In 2014, Buttigieg took an unpaid leave of absence from the mayor’s office to serve in Afghanistan during a seven-month deployment. He earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his counterterrorism work.

Phillip Zonkel can be reached at 562-294-5996 or [email protected].

About the author

Phillip Zonkel

Award-winning journalist Phillip Zonkel spent 17 years at Long Beach's Press-Telegram, where he was the first reporter in the paper's history to have a beat covering the city's vibrant LGBTQ. He also created and ran the popular and innovative LGBTQ news blog, Out in the 562.

He won two awards and received a nomination for his reporting on the local LGBTQ community, including a two-part investigation that exposed anti-gay bullying of local high school students and the school districts' failure to implement state mandated protections for LGBTQ students.

Share This

Share this post with your friends!