Will an openly gay mayor from the Rust Belt be the Democrats' next leader? (Guardian)
As Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in the lobby of his namesake Fifth Avenue skyscraper to announce his candidacy for president, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, also had an announcement. In a personal essay published in the local newspaper that same day, Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic rising star who had also served in Afghanistan as a lieutenant with the Navy Reserves, came out as gay.
Now, nearly two years later, after Trump rode a dark horse campaign to the White House, the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend is mounting his own outsider bid to be the face of the opposition in the Trump era as the chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“This race is a test of whether the DNC is prepared to change,” Buttigieg told the Guardian in an interview. “I believe I represent that change.”
A 2014 Washington Post profile called Buttigieg “the most interesting mayor you’ve never heard of”. The next year, Buttigieg won his re-election bid with 80% of the vote, a wider margin than the first time around. In June, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni proposed: “The First Gay President?”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/23/pete-buttigieg-democratic-party-chair-candidate?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=214678&subid=20993289&CMP=GT_US_collection
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