Age, Biography, and Wiki
Pete Buttigieg was born on January 19, 1982. He gained prominence as the youngest mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and later became the first openly gay major U.S. presidential candidate. His life has been documented on Wikipedia, offering insights into his early life, education, and political career.
| Occupation | Politician |
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| Date of Birth | 19 January 1982 |
| Age | 43 Years |
| Birth Place | South Bend, Indiana, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Capricorn |
| Country | India |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Currently, there is no detailed information available on Pete Buttigieg's height, weight, or specific body measurements. However, as a public figure, his presence is often noted for his engaging demeanor and leadership stature.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Pete Buttigieg is married to Chasten Buttigieg, a high school teacher and advocate. The couple tied the knot in 2018 and have two children together. Their relationship has been marked by mutual support and shared values, contributing to their public image as a committed and supportive couple.
He is an only child. His parents met and married while employed as faculty at New Mexico State University. Buttigieg's father embarked on a career as a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend. Buttigieg's mother also taught at the University of Notre Dame for 29 years. His father, a translator of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and the editor of a three-volume English edition, influenced his son's decision to study literature in college.
Buttigieg supports abortion rights and the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortion services except in cases of rape, incest, or if the life of the mother is in danger. He favors amending civil rights legislation, including the Federal Equality Act, so that LGBT Americans receive federal non-discrimination protections.
Buttigieg announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher, in a December 14, 2017, Facebook post. They had been dating since August 2015 after meeting on the dating app Hinge. They were married on June 16, 2018, in a private ceremony at the Cathedral of St. James. This made Buttigieg the first mayor of South Bend to get married while in office. Chasten uses the surname Buttigieg.
Buttigieg announced on August 17, 2021, that he and his husband had become parents. He elaborated on September 4, 2021, that they had adopted two newborn fraternal twins.
Buttigieg was a 2015 recipient of the Fenn Award, given by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in recognition of his work as mayor. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in June 2019, Queerty named him one of its "Pride50" people—"trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people". At the Golden Heart Awards, run by God's Love We Deliver, Buttigieg was awarded the "Golden Heart Award for Outstanding Leadership and Public Service" in October 2019. Equality California, an LGBT-rights organization, gave Buttigieg and his husband Chasten their Equality Trailblazer Award in August 2020. Attitude, a British gay lifestyle magazine, named Buttigieg their 2020 Person of the Year to recognize his groundbreaking run for the presidency. In August 2024, Buttgieg was inducted by the LGBTQ Victory Fund into the LGBTQ+ Political Hall of Fame.
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| Husband | Chasten Glezman (m. June 16, 2018) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Pete Buttigieg's net worth is estimated to be approximately $16 million. This wealth is derived from various sources, including:
- Government Salary: $221,500 per year as Secretary of Transportation.
- Book Deals: Over $2 million from his memoirs Shortest Way Home and Trust: America’s Best Chance.
- Investments: An $8 million stock portfolio featuring companies like Tesla, Pfizer, and NextEra Energy.
- Speaking Engagements: Estimated earnings of $500,000 annually.
In a new phase of the Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative, South Bend partnered with the Notre Dame Clinical Law Center to provide free legal assistance to qualifying applicants wishing to acquire vacant lots and, with local nonprofits, to repair or construct homes and provide low-income home ownership assistance using South Bend Housing and Urban Development funds.
After serious issues that had occurred in United States passenger aviation in 2022 such as Southwest Airlines' holiday meltdown, Buttigieg faced criticism for not taking enough action to penalize negligent airlines. Buttigieg subsequently directed the Department of Transportation to address monopolization and consumer rights in the industry. President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg launched flightrights.gov, an airline customer service dashboard that informs airline customers of the compensation they are entitled to after flight cancellations or delays. He also created a chief competition officer position in the department. In March 2023, Buttigieg opposed the proposed merger of Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines as anticompetitive.
His plan for debt-free college has called for expanding Pell Grants for low-income students, as well as other investments and reversing Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy. Under Buttigieg's college plan, the bottom 80 percent of students with respect to income would have received free education, while the top 20 percent would have paid for at least some portion of their tuition. Buttigieg has opposed free college tuition for all students because he has believed universally free tuition unfairly subsidizes higher-income families at the expense of lower-income individuals who do not attend college. This position distinguished Buttigieg from his competitors in the 2020 presidential election.
In 2018, Buttigieg said he favored Medicare for All. During his presidential campaign, Buttigieg has promoted Medicare for All Who Want It, which includes a public option for health insurance. He has spoken favorably of Maryland's all-payer rate setting. Buttigieg has described Medicare for All Who Want It as inclusive, more efficient than the current system, and a possible precursor or "glide path" to single-payer health insurance. He also favors a partial expansion of Medicare that would allow Americans ages 50 to 64 to buy into Medicare, and supports proposed legislation, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, that would "create a fund to guarantee up to 12 weeks of partial income for workers to care for newborn children or family members with serious illnesses."
Career, Business, and Investments
Pete Buttigieg's career is marked by significant roles:
- Government Service: He served as the Mayor of South Bend from 2012 to 2020 and as the U.S. Secretary of Transportation from 2021 to 2023.
- Business Ventures: His investments include a diverse stock portfolio and a notable real estate holding, such as a $1.5 million lakefront property in Traverse City.
- Literary Works: He has authored successful books, leveraging his political influence to secure significant book deals and royalties.
Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oxford, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. In 2007, he began three years of work at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. 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 South Bend's mayor, Buttigieg came out as gay in 2015. He married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher and writer, in June 2018. Buttigieg declined to seek a third term as mayor.
Buttigieg was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. In 2007, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in philosophy, politics, and economics after studying at Pembroke College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was an editor of the Oxford International Review, and was a co-founder and member of the Democratic Renaissance Project, an informal debate and discussion group of approximately a dozen Oxford students.
After earning his Oxford degree, in 2007, Buttigieg became a consultant at the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company, where he worked on energy, retail, economic development, and logistics for three years. His clients at McKinsey included the health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; electronics retailer Best Buy; Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws; two nonprofit environmentalist groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Energy Foundation; and several U.S. government agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Energy Department, Defense Department, and Postal Service. He took a leave of absence from McKinsey in 2008 to become research director for Jill Long Thompson's unsuccessful campaign for Indiana governor. His work at McKinsey included trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, which he rarely discusses. Buttigieg left McKinsey in 2010 in order to focus full-time on his campaign for Indiana state treasurer.
Buttigieg ran for the Democratic nomination for mayor of South Bend in 2011. In a PBS Michiana – WNIT broadcast, he expressed his desire to reinvigorate South Bend, especially with respect to job creation and education. Buttigieg campaigned on other issues, such as pursuing international investment, increasing presence of police and other safety professionals, and improving city services. Buttigieg won his primary election against four opponents on May 3, 2011, receiving 7,663 votes. Buttigieg was elected mayor of South Bend in the November 2011 general election with 10,991 of the 14,883 votes cast, or 74 percent of all votes. He defeated Republican nominee Norris W. Curry Jr. and Libertarian nominee Patrick M. Farrell. Buttigieg took office in January 2012 at the age of 29, becoming the second-youngest mayor in South Bend history and the youngest incumbent mayor, at the time, of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents.
The Common Council approved Buttigieg's request to enable his administration to develop a city climate plan in April 2019; Buttigieg signed a contract with the Chicago firm Delta Institute to help develop it. In late November 2019, the city's Common Council voted 7–0 to approve the resultant Carbon Neutral 2050 plan, setting the goal of meeting the Paris Agreement's 26-percent emission reduction by 2025, and aiming for a further reductions of 45 percent by 2035.
Supporting private development in South Bend was another initiative Buttigieg continued during his second term. By 2019, the city had seen $374 million in private investment for mixed-use developments since Buttigieg had taken office, by one estimate. By another account, Downtown South Bend saw roughly $200 million in private investment during Buttigieg's tenure.
After a white South Bend police officer shot and killed Eric Logan, an African American man, in June 2019, Buttigieg was drawn from his presidential campaign to focus on the emerging public reaction. Police body cameras were not turned on during Logan's death. Soon after Logan's death, Buttigieg presided over a town hall meeting attended by disaffected activists from the African American community as well as relatives of the deceased man. The local police union accused Buttigieg of making decisions for political gain. Buttigieg secured $180,000 in November 2019 to commission a review of South Bend's police department policies and practices, to be conducted by Chicago-based consulting firm 21CP Solutions.
Buttigieg announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend in December 2018. Buttigieg endorsed James Mueller in the 2019 South Bend mayoral election. Mueller was a high-school classmate of Buttigieg's and his mayoral chief of staff, and later executive director of the South Bend Department of Community Investment. Mueller's campaign promised to continue the progress that had been made under Buttigieg's mayoralty. Buttigieg appeared in campaign advertisements for Mueller and donated to Mueller's campaign. Mueller won the May 2019 Democratic primary with 37 percent of the vote in a crowded field. In the November 2019 general election, Mueller defeated Republican nominee Sean M. Haas with 63 percent of the vote. Mueller took office on New Year's Day 2020.
Buttigieg addressed the African American Mayors Association in late February 2021 to discuss systemic racism. He argued that misguided investments in the federal transport and infrastructure policy had contributed to racial inequity. In early March 2021, Politico noted that Buttigieg had mentioned racial equity in almost every interview he gave to the press as it related to his work at the department. In late June 2022, Buttigieg launched a $1 billion Reconnecting Communities pilot program to establish racial equity in roads. Using money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the program aims to reconnect cities and neighborhoods divided by roads through projects such as rapid bus lines, pedestrian walkways, and planning studies.
After passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Insider called Buttigieg "the most powerful transportation secretary ever", as the department now has $210 billion of discretionary grants to award.
In December 2023, the Department of Transportation imposed a record fine of $140 million on Southwest Airlines for mass violations of consumer protection laws in 2022 when the company cancelled flights and left more than 2 million passengers stranded. On October 30, 2024, Buttigieg announced that a rule had taken effect requiring airlines to automatically provide refunds to passengers whose flights are canceled and do not accept another flight, as well as if paid services are not provided.
Buttigieg informed Congress in late March 2021 that the Biden administration was planning to prioritize the construction of the Gateway Rail Tunnel Project due to its economic significance. The progress of the project, which was stalled by President Trump, was said to be moving faster, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Buttigieg announced the environmental impact assessment of the project—which was largely seen as a sign of major progress on the project. Also, Buttigieg has served as a promoter of the American Jobs Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
During his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Buttigieg stated that, if elected, he would restore the United States' commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and double its pledge to the Green Climate Fund. He also supports the Green New Deal proposed by House Democrats, solar panel subsidies, and a carbon tax and dividend policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Buttigieg's education plan includes a $700-billion investment in universal full-day child care and pre-kindergarten for all children from infancy to age five. Buttigieg has also proposed tripling Title I funding for schools serving students predominately from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Other goals include doubling the number of new teachers of color in the next 10 years; addressing school segregation with a $500-million fund; paying teachers more; expanding mental health services in schools; and creating more after-school programs and summer learning opportunities.
Social Network
Pete Buttigieg maintains a strong social media presence, engaging with his audience through platforms like Twitter and Instagram. His public persona is well-received, with a focus on political Discourse and community engagement.
Frank Bruni of The New York Times published a 2016 column praising Buttigieg's work as mayor, with a headline asking if he might be "the first gay president". Barack Obama cited him as one of the Democratic Party's talents in a November 2016 profile on the outgoing president conducted by The New Yorker. As Buttigieg's national profile grew following his run in the 2017 Democratic National Committee chairmanship election, Buttigieg increased his out-of-city travel. By early 2018, there was speculation that Buttigieg would run for either governor or president in 2020.
In January 2017, Buttigieg announced his candidacy for chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in its 2017 chairmanship election. He built a national profile as an emerging dark horse in the race for the chairmanship with the backing of former DNC chairman Howard Dean, former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, Indiana senator Joe Donnelly, and North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp. Buttigieg campaigned on the need for the Democratic Party to empower its millennial members. Buttigieg pledged to resign as mayor if elected DNC chair.
A 2023 study by political scientists from Loyola Marymount University reported how different aspects of Buttigieg's biography affected voters' views on his electability as a US President. The authors concluded, that "His military background... successfully countered voter discrimination, suggesting that some gay candidates may close the gap once voters learn more about their story."
Early into his tenure, Buttigieg noted that the United States's actions surrounding road traffic safety are lacking and suggested improving the design of roads. Also, while acknowledging how the United States fell behind other developed countries with respect to bicycle and pedestrian safety, Buttigieg encouraged greater focus on human behavior in infrastructure policy. Likewise, in March 2021, Buttigieg indicated he was open to tolls on Interstate 80, but not the tollage of bridges, suggesting "big picture solutions" instead, like a mileage tax. However, the Biden administration did not include a gas tax or mileage tax in the infrastructure plan it released that month.
In June 2019, Buttigieg said: "We will remain open to working with a regime like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the benefit of the American people. But we can no longer sell out our deepest values for the sake of fossil fuel access and lucrative business deals." He supports ending U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.
Education
Buttigieg holds a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a Master's degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) from the University of Oxford. His educational background has been instrumental in shaping his political and social perspectives.
Buttigieg was valedictorian of the class of 2000 at St. Joseph High School in South Bend. That year, he won first prize in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage essay contest. He traveled to Boston where he accepted the award and met Caroline Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy family. The subject of his essay was the integrity and political courage of then U.S. representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of only two independent politicians in Congress.
In 2000, Buttigieg was one of two students chosen to be a delegate from Indiana to the United States Senate Youth Program, an annual scholarship competition sponsored jointly by the U.S. Senate and the Hearst Foundations. In his last high-school year, Pete Buttigieg was named the school valedictorian, voted senior class president and chosen Most Likely to be U.S. President.
After graduating from high school, Buttigieg attended Harvard College, where he majored in history and literature. He became president of the Student Advisory Committee of the Harvard Institute of Politics and worked on the institute's annual study of youth attitudes on politics. His undergraduate thesis, The Quiet American's Errand into the Wilderness, examined the influence of Puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as reflected in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Before graduating from college, Buttigieg was an investigative intern at WMAQ-TV, Chicago's NBC News affiliate. He also interned for Democrat Jill Long Thompson during her unsuccessful 2002 congressional bid.
After college, Buttigieg worked on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign as a policy and research specialist for several months in Arizona and New Mexico. From 2004 to 2005, Buttigieg was conference director of the Cohen Group. In 2006, he lent assistance to Joe Donnelly's successful congressional campaign.
Some African Americans have accused Buttigieg of racism for his response to this and other incidents. Former South Bend councilman Henry Davis Jr. alleged that Buttigieg "perpetuated and tolerated" systemic racism in the city. Michael Harriot, senior writer at The Root, accused Buttigieg of "racist paternalism" for saying that children of color lack role models that promote the value of education. Many African Americans also point to Buttigieg's firing of Darryl Boykins, South Bend's first black chief of police. Boykins claimed that Buttigieg used a scandal—involving secret tapes of white police officers making racist comments—as a pretext for firing him.
In April 2020, Buttigieg launched Win The Era PAC, a new super PAC to raise money and distribute it to down-ballot Democrats. The PAC focused on local elected positions, and its list of endorsements included candidates such as Jaime Harrison, Cal Cunningham, Gina Ortiz Jones, Christine Hunschofsky, and Levar Stoney. On June 8, 2020, the University of Notre Dame announced that it had hired Buttigieg as a teacher and researcher for the 2020–21 academic year. Also, in October 2020, Buttigieg released his second book, Trust: America's Best Chance.
From February to April 2025, Buttigieg served as a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, delivering a seminar on campus every week.
Buttigieg favors the abolition of the Electoral College and has also called for restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their prison sentences.
Buttigieg is a Christian, and he has said his faith has had a strong influence in his life. He was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant and attended Catholic schools. While at the University of Oxford, Buttigieg attended Christ Church Cathedral, saying he felt "more-or-less Anglican" by the time he returned to South Bend. Augustine of Hippo, Catholic priest James Martin, and Garry Wills are among his religious influences. A member of the Episcopal Church, Buttigieg attended the Cathedral of St. James while living in South Bend.
