Mayor Pete Buttigieg (R), of South Bend, Indiana, who has been mentioned as a possible 2020 presidential candidate, talks with reporters after addressing the National Action Network’s annual national convention in New York, New York, USA, 04 April 2019.EPA-EFE/JUSTIN LANE 
It seems almost impossible to believe, but the 2020 US presidential election process is already well and truly underway. Numerous senators, congresspeople, former officials, and one mayor are already officially declared as candidates, or are on the verge of making their announcements. The first caucus state, Iowa, and the first primary votes are actually only about 10 months off into the future. But even more crucial right now are the competitions for fundraising for the upcoming campaigns and gaining positive exposure before appreciative live and televised audiences.
People like independent democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand, several current and former members of the lower house like Beto O'Rourke, among others, have already staked their claim to be considered as the logical leader of their party in the coming general election. But two other men, very different in experience, age, and even temperament, have been gaining much of the attention.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a silver-haired 76-year-old, seemingly in fighting trim, continues to perch on the cusp of deciding whether or not to take one last chance for the brass ring, following decades as a senator, vice president and twice unsuccessful presidential candidate (1988 and 2008). But in the past week or so, he has been dogged by a string of accusations that he has been rather more than a bit too touchy-feely with female supporters and attendees at meetings, even if no one is charging him with making actual unwanted, overt sexual overtures – let alone the adulterous, transactional relationships in the unapologetic style of the current president. Biden’s behaviour has been part of the up close, hands-on style he has always showed through his entire political life, but he is now taking flak over this behaviour as something now thoroughly out of place in the “Me Too” age.
But the second man is the incumbent mayor of the South Bend, Indiana – Peter Buttigieg.
“Who is that?” we can just about hear our readers saying.
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Buttigieg is just 37 years old, but he has a lot under his belt. He studied at Harvard, has been a Rhodes scholar, served as a naval intelligence analyst in Afghanistan, worked as a management analyst/consultant at McKinsey, learned a handful of languages (including Arabic and a self-taught competence in Norwegian), and is now serving his second term as South Bend’s mayor. That city has around 100,000 residents and its greater metropolitan area makes it the fourth largest in the state of Indiana.
Oh, and did we mention that Buttigieg publicly came out as gay some four years ago, and then got married? A few months later he was reelected with 80% of the vote. Indiana is a relatively strong conservative state and was “blessed” by many years of governorship by Mike Pence.
Buttigieg lives in a house close to the home he grew up in as a child. Both parents were professors at the University of Notre Dame and his father is of Maltese origin. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a BA in history and literature. He wrote his thesis on the influence of puritanism on US foreign policy, as reflected in Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American. He received a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
For those who don’t know much about South Bend, its two greatest claims to fame are that it is the home (well, okay, it is just beyond the city limits) of the University of Notre Dame. This university has an excellent academic reputation, but it is even better known for the phenomenal skills of its university football and basketball teams over generations. The other is that it is (or was) the site for the headquarters and main factory for Studebaker – a major automobile manufacturer until it died out in the 1960s. One of Buttigieg’s major interests has been in urban renewal and industry for the future, including efforts to turn the site of that vast auto assembly plant into a hi-tech innovation and employment growth hub.
His tenure in office has gained him various awards for his administration and its works, but that hardly explains how he became an unlikely hot ticket in the early rounds of the 2020 nomination process for the Democrats. What has done this, more than anything else, has been some all-star appearances on broadcast town halls like the one on CNN, or at speaking engagements such as a recent one at a Boston area university.