Former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has announced that he will end the presidential campaign in which he made history as the first openly gay man to win delegates in the nomination race of a large political party.
His exit comes one day after his disappointing fourth place in South Carolina and two days before Super Tuesday, when he had to continue to fight amid the domination of Senator Bernie Sanders and the resurgence of the former vice-president Joe Biden.
Buttigieg’s success in the campaign, even outside of his personal history, was a remarkable success. As mayor of a mid-sized midwestern city, he went from relative political obscurity to become a viable candidate for the White House.
His delegate’s narrow victory over Sanders, Iowa was overshadowed by the chaos of the counting of votes there – and his victory remained in doubt until it was confirmed after a final. recalculation and recount have been performed. But with his victory, Buttigieg achieved what would have been considered politically impossible only ten years ago.
Let’s vote:When will the primaries of the 2020 presidential election take place?
And at caucus night, an emotional Buttigieg was clearly struck by the significance of what he had accomplished.
He said that the success of his campaign had taught him to “believe in American belonging” and that he had let him “remember what it was like to be a teenager from Indiana, wondering if he would belong never to this world. ”
“You wonder if something deep inside him meant that he would always be a stranger. He would never wear the uniform, would never be accepted, would never even know love. Now this same person stands before you, a mayor, a veteran, happily married, and one step closer to becoming the next President of the United States. ”
Buttigieg went out in a 2015 op-ed in the South Bend Tribune, months before being elected for his second term as mayor with 80% of the 10,000 votes cast.
In June, he told the Des Moines Register that he didn’t want his sexuality to be the only thing he was known for.
“I am proud of who I am,” said Buttigieg. “I am certainly very proud of my marriage and my husband. We are not afraid of that. It is not the only thing that defines me either.”
Buttigieg, a former Navy intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, was one of the few military veterans in the race. As a Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University who speaks multiple languages, he also had some of the highest university degrees in the race,
During the campaign, he presented himself as a moderate alternative to progressive candidates like Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was also younger and more in tune with the current Democratic Party than former Vice President Joe Biden.
At 38, he was the youngest presidential candidate, yet he failed to connect with voters under the age of 30, who, ironically, tended to favor the 78-year-old Sanders. However, it has performed well with older voters.
“I want to be brave like you”:9-year-old boy asks Pete Buttigieg to help him out gay
From the start, Buttigieg’s candidacy was haunted by headlines about his inability to gain the support of minority voters, especially African-Americans. Despite these efforts to make progress with black and Latin American communities, its number of polls remained grim with this demographic data. And this lack of support made him unable to compete as the race moved to more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina.
During the campaign, Buttigieg was criticized for responding to a police shootout of an African American man in South Bend, as well as for the lack of diversity in the city’s police force.
His campaign found enthusiastic support among wealthy Democratic donors and was one of the primary recipients of donations from Wall Street contributors. These contributions led Sanders to present him as the candidate of powerful companies, which would not represent the interests of American workers.
Buttigieg, who followed only Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren for contributions of less than $ 200, defended the acceptance of his donation campaign from major donors. He told Fox News that even though he was “not a fan of the current campaign funding system,” he “also insisted that we should get on with it with all the support we could get.”
Contributor: Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY; Barbara Rodriguez, The Des Moines Register; Andrew Clark, the star of Indianapolis
