Pete Buttigieg Announces Official Start to 2020 Campaign. NYT

[elleng]

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Pete Buttigieg, the young Midwestern mayor whose presidential bid has been an unlikely early focus of attention from Democratic voters and donors, kicked off his campaign on Sunday and proclaimed his hometown’s revival was the answer to skeptics who ask how he has the “audacity” to see himself in the White House.

At a rally inside a partly rebuilt factory, once owned by the automaker Studebaker and now being turned into glass-sheathed offices for tech and other businesses, Mr. Buttigieg said, “I ran for mayor in 2011 knowing nothing like Studebaker would ever come back, but that we would, our city would, if we had the courage to reimagine our future.”

Mr. Buttigieg, a 37-year-old Rhodes Scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, would represent a series of historic firsts if elected: the youngest president ever and the first who is openly gay.

Though he is a political progressive, Mr. Buttigieg’s main message is that he represents the claim to leadership of millennial Americans, those who will be on “the business end” of climate change and left to clean up messes that current leaders have made of health care, immigration and exorbitantly priced education.

Little known just two months ago, Mr. Buttigieg has won support and financial backing through a blitz of television interviews in which he has given earnest, nuanced responses that make liberal points without raising the temperature.

But he has also engaged some of the left’s big targets, accusing Vice President Mike Pence of religious hypocrisy for standing faithfully behind President Trump and for seeking to erode gay rights. Addressing the “Mike Pences of the world,” he said last Sunday, “your quarrel is not with me — your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-announcement.html?

[cilla4progress]

1. He's now

my guy!

Smart, experienced, down to earth.

[loyalsister]

2. I loved the reference to the "skinny kid with a funny name"

I enjoyed the way they addressed the challenge of his name at the opening of the event.