Pete Buttigieg

Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg (BOOT-ə-jəj; born January 19, 1982) is an American politician who has served as the United States secretary of transportation since February 3, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana from 2012 through 2020. Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and Oxford University, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. From 2009 to 2017, he was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was mobilized and deployed to the War in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014. Before being elected as Mayor of South Bend in 2011, Buttigieg worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, Joe Donnelly, and John Kerry, and ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for Indiana state treasurer in 2010. While serving as mayor, Buttigieg came out as gay in 2015. He married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher, writer, and LGBT rights advocate, in June 2018. Buttigieg declined to seek a third term as mayor. Buttigieg ran as a candidate for president in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, launching his campaign for the 2020 United States presidential election on April 14, 2019.