Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg was born on January 19, 1982, in South Bend, Indiana, the only child of Jennifer Anne (Montgomery) and Joseph A. Buttigieg. His parents met and married while employed as faculty at New Mexico State University. His father was born and raised in Hamrun, Malta, and had studied to be a Jesuit before emigrating to the United States and embarking on a secular career as a professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend, where he taught for 29 years. His mother was born in Stanislaus County, California, graduated from Radford High School in El Paso, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving her BA and MA in 1967; her mother was born in Oklahoma, and her father was born in Indiana.

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 to accept the award and met Caroline Kennedy and other members of President Kennedy's family. The subject of his winning 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 also chosen as one of two student delegates from Indiana to the United States Senate Youth Program, an annual scholarship competition sponsored jointly by the U.S. Senate and the Hearst Foundations.

Buttigieg attended Harvard University, 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. He wrote his undergraduate thesis, titled The Quiet American's Errand into the Wilderness, on the influence of puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as reflected in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American. The title of his thesis is also an allusion to American historian Perry Miller's work Errand into the Wilderness. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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. When he accepted the offer to work for Kerry's campaign, he declined another to work for Barack Obama's 2004 United States Senate campaign. From 2004 to 2005, Buttigieg was conference director of the Cohen Group. In 2006, he lent assistance to Joe Donnelly's successful congressional campaign.

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 about 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 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. Buttigieg left McKinsey in 2010 in order to focus full-time on his campaign for Indiana state treasurer.

Buttigieg joined the U.S. Navy Reserve through the direct commission officer (DCO) program and was sworn in as an ensign in naval intelligence in September 2009. In 2014, he took a seven-month leave during his mayoral term to deploy to Afghanistan. While there, Buttigieg was part of a unit assigned to identify and disrupt terrorist finance networks. Part of this was done at Bagram Air Base, but he was also an armed driver for his commander on more than 100 trips into Kabul. Buttigieg has jokingly referred to this role as "military Uber", because he had to watch out for ambushes and explosive devices along the roads and ensure that the vehicle was guarded. In order to better communicate with the local Afghans, he learned some Dari (a dialect of the Persian language). Buttigieg was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal. He resigned his commission from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2017.

Buttigieg was the Democratic nominee for state treasurer of Indiana in 2010. He received 37.5% of the vote, losing to Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock.

In the United States Senate election in Indiana he campaigned on behalf of Democratic Senate nominee Evan Bayh and criticized Bayh's opponent, Todd Young, for having voiced support in 2010 for retaining the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, which Bayh had voted to repeal. In the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Buttigieg endorsed Hillary Clinton. He also endorsed Democratic nominee Lynn Coleman in that year's election for Indiana's 2nd congressional district, which includes South Bend.

In 2011, as South Bend's mayor-elect, Buttigieg supported John Broden in his successful bid to become St. Joseph County Democratic Party chairman.

Buttigieg was elected mayor of South Bend in the November 2011 election, with 10,991 of the 14,883 votes cast (74%). He took office in January 2012 at the age of 29, becoming the second-youngest mayor in South Bend history (Schuyler Colfax III had become mayor in 1898 when aged 28) and the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents.

In 2012, after a federal investigation ruled that South Bend police had illegally recorded telephone calls of several officers, Buttigieg demoted police chief Darryl Boykins. (Boykins had first been appointed in 2008 by Mayor Stephen Luecke, and reappointed by Buttigieg earlier in 2012.) Buttigieg also dismissed the department's communications director, the one who had actually "discovered the recordings but continued to record the line at Boykins' command". The police communications director alleged that the recordings captured four senior police officers making racist remarks and discussing illegal acts. The city is 26% black, but only 6% of the police force is black.

Buttigieg has written that his "first serious mistake as mayor" came shortly after taking office in 2012, when he decided to ask for Boykins's resignation. The city's first ever African-American police chief accepted the request. However, the next day, backed by supporters and legal counsel, Boykin requested reinstatement. When Buttigieg denied this request, Boykin sued the city for racial discrimination, arguing that the taping policy had existed under previous police chiefs, who were white. Buttigieg settled the suits brought by Boykins and the four officers out of court for over $800,000. A federal judge ruled in 2015 that Boykins's recordings violated the Federal Wiretap Act. Buttigieg came under pressure from political opponents to release the tapes, but said that doing so would be a violation of the Wiretap Act. He called for the eradication of racial bias in the police force. An Indiana court is hearing a case for the release of the tapes.

In February 2012, soon after taking office, Buttigieg and the board of the Housing Authority of South Bend requested that the Department of Housing and Urban Development conduct a "full audit and investigation" of allegations of improperly awarded contracts and misallocated funds in the Housing Authority of South Bend. In 20-13, federal officials outlined "dire" mismanagement and financial problems, and faulted the board with failure to provide proper oversight to the agency and catch its problems. In October 2014, after the board failed to submit a plan to fix the agencies problems, the federal officials urged Buttigieg to take action, "including the possibility of replacing all or some existing board members". In January 2015, after all six of the board's members either resigned or saw their terms expire, Buttigieg appointed six new members.

During Buttigieg's tenure, the city's police force continued to struggle with a high homicide rate; the annual number of murders in South Bend was 18 in 2012, 9 in 2013, 17 in 2014, 7 in 2015, 14 in 2016, 15 in 2017, and 13 in 2018.

In a June 2015 piece in the South Bend Tribune, Buttigieg came out as gay. By coming out, Buttigieg became Indiana's first openly gay elected executive. He was the first elected official in Indiana to come out while in office, and the highest elected official in Indiana to come out. Buttigieg was also the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate, and the second overall, after Republican Fred Karger, who ran in 2012.

As mayor, Buttigieg promoted the transformation of the former Studebaker plant location into a technology park named Ignition Park. He oversaw the city's launching of a 3-1-1 system in 2013.

One of the major private developments to go through the city's approval process during Buttigieg's first term was a pair of seven-story condominiums along the St. Joseph River, across the river from Century Center. In December 2013, the Area Board of Zoning Appeals approved the approximately $38.5 million development. It broke ground in 2018. The city ultimately invested $5 million in related projects, such as an adjoining section of riverwalk.

In 2013, Buttigieg proposed a "Smart Streets" urban development program to improve South Bend's downtown area, and in early 2015—after traffic studies and public hearings—he secured a bond issue for the program backed by tax increment financing. "Smart Streets" was aimed at improving economic development and urban vibrancy as well as road safety. The project involved the conversion of one-way streets in downtown to two-way streets, traffic-calming measures, the widening of sidewalks, streetside beautification (including the planting of trees and installation of decorative brickwork), the addition of bike lanes and the introduction of roundabouts. Elements of the project were finished in 2016, and it was officially completed in 2017. The project was credited with spurring private development in the city.

In addition to his native English, Buttigieg has some knowledge of Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Dari Persian, and French. Buttigieg plays guitar and piano, and in 2013 performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra as a guest piano soloist with Ben Folds. Buttigieg was a 2014 Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow. He was a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Fenn Award in 2015.

Buttigieg has been involved with the Truman National Security Project since 2005 and serves as a fellow with expertise in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2014, he was named to the organization's board of advisors.

South Bend adopted the National Network for Safe Communities’ Group Violence Intervention approach in 2014.

By the end of Buttigieg's first term, South Bend had sold off 71 city-owned properties. A significant example was the former Bendix Corporation headquarters and factory, which the city sold to Curtis Products in 2014. In late 2014 and early 2015, South Bend negotiated the sale of the city-owned Blackthorn Golf Course. The LaSalle Hotel was sold to developers in 2015 for conversion into apartments.

Buttigieg served for seven months in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, returning to the United States on September 23, 2014. While deployed, he was assigned to the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, a counterterrorism unit that targeted Taliban insurgency financing. In his absence, Deputy Mayor Mark Neal, South Bend's city comptroller, served as executive from February 2014 until Buttigieg returned to his role as mayor in October 2014.

In 2014, The Washington Post called Buttigieg "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of" based on his youth, education, and military background.

In 2014, Buttigieg announced that he would seek a second term. He won the Democratic primary with 78% of the vote, defeating Henry Davis Jr., the city councilman from the second district. In November 2015, he was elected to his second term as mayor with over 80% of the vote, defeating Republican Kelly Jones by a margin of 8,515 to 2,074 votes.

Buttigieg was a leading figure behind the creation of a nightly laser-light display along downtown South Bend's St. Joseph River trail as public art. The project cost $700,000, which was raised from private funds. The "River Lights" installation was unveiled in May 2015 as part of the city's 150th anniversary celebrations.

One of Buttigieg's signature programs has been the "Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative". Known locally as "1,000 Properties in 1,000 Days", it is a project to repair or demolish blighted properties across South Bend. The program reached its goal two months before its scheduled end date in November 2015. By the thousandth day of the program, before Buttigieg's first term ended, nearly 40% of the targeted houses were repaired, and 679 were demolished or under contract for demolition. Buttigieg took note of the fact that many homes within communities of color were the ones demolished, leading to early distrust between the city and these communities.

In 2015, during the controversy over Indiana Senate Bill 101—the original version of which was widely criticized for allowing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people—Buttigieg emerged as a leading opponent of the legislation. Amid his reelection campaign, he came out as gay to express his solidarity with the LGBTQ community.

Buttigieg had been arranging a deal under which the city's parks department would sell Elbel Golf Course to developers for $747,500. In January 2016, amid public pressure, the city dropped the plan. The idea had been floated in 2014, when the city was exploring selling the Blackthorn golf course, but began to gain momentum in 2015. Buttigieg had justified the plan to sell the city-owned golf course by claiming that residents found golf to be a low priority, that the course had failed to turn a profit for over five years, and that the city was subsidizing rounds of golf at about $2 per round. Buttigieg characterized the course as a drain on the city's finances. Opposition arose, with concerns that the sale would limit public access to the land and endanger the protection of wetlands surrounding it. At 313 acres (127 ha), Elbel constituted the city's largest park. The park, while owned by the city, is outside city boundaries. The original plan Buttigieg outlined for the sale would have allowed it to be developed freely by the buyer.

Buttigieg supported a proposed high-rise development in South Bend's East Bank neighborhood that would greatly exceed the existing height ordinances. In the weeks after the Common Council voted against the development in December 2016, Buttigieg and his administration negotiated a new compromise plan with the developer, Matthews LLC, that reduced the height from twelve stories to nine. In January 2017, the Common Council voted to approve a ten-year tax abatement for the $35 million development. In February, the Common Council raised the height limits for the East Bank neighborhood to facilitate the development. The city later committed $5 million in tax increment financing to the project.

Buttigieg had expressed his openness to a proposal by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians to open a tribal casino in South Bend. The Common Council approved a casino deal in April 2016, and the Pokagon Band received federal clearance to put the land into a required trust in November 2016. Under a revenue-sharing agreement that the Pokagon Band voluntarily entered into with the city, the city receives the greater of 2% of the casino's annual Class II gaming revenues or either $1 million or $2 million (depending on the number of games at the casino). The casino opened in January 2018 as Four Winds South Bend.

In 2016, columnist Frank Bruni of The New York Times published a column praising Buttigieg's work as mayor, with a headline asking if he might be "the first gay president". Additionally, Barack Obama was cited as mentioning him as one of the Democratic Party's talents in a profile on the former president conducted by The New Yorker.

In 2017, after complaints from downtown business owners about an homeless encampment that had formed under the Main Street railroad viaduct, Buttigieg assembled a 22-member task force to develop recommendations to prevent such encampments from forming. The task force's report recommended a gateway center and permanent supportive housing project, which would have a "housing first" approach that would provide immediate shelter regardless of behavioral or substance abuse issues. However, this project was scrapped by the city, due to the being unable to find a location due to opposition from prospective neighbors.The city instead opted to attempt a scattered-site housing approach with participating landlords.

Under Buttigieg, South Bend invested $50 million in the city's parks, many of which had been neglected during the preceding decades; the city also began a "smart sewer" program, the first phase of which was finished in 2017 at a cost of $150 million. The effort utilized federal funds and by 2019 had reduced the combined sewer overflow by 75%. The impetus for the effort was a fine that the EPA had levied against the city in 2011 for Clean Water Act violations.

In January 2017, Buttigieg announced his candidacy for chair of the Democratic National Committee 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 idea that the aging Democratic Party needed to empower its millennial members".

In December 2017, Buttigieg announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher. 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 in South Bend. This made Buttigieg the first mayor of South Bend to get married while in office. Chasten uses his husband's surname, Buttigieg.

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 HUD (Housing and Urban Development) funds. He increased city funding levels for home construction and improvement in the 2018 South Bend budget via several programs, including the UEA (Urban Enterprise Association) Pilot Home Repair Program, a grant intended to improve low-income residents' quality of life.

In September 2018, Buttigieg voiced concern about a number of issues regarding the Housing Authority of South Bend, calling for reforms to be made. The following month, he presented its board with a letter outlining several problems, and declaring that the Housing Authority of South Bend had risen to the, "top tier of priorities for my administration, and will receive sustained attention from my office for the balance of my time as mayor."

Beginning in August 2018, Buttigieg promoted the idea of moving the city's South Shore Line station from South Bend International Airport to the city's downtown. He made it a goal to have the city complete this project by 2025. Buttigieg's earlier budgets had allotted funding to the existing South Shore Relocation project, which would have moved the station to a different end of the South Bend International Airport. Buttigieg's new push for a downtown station engendered suggestions of other possible locations. Buttigieg ordered a study of five location options, including his personally preferred downtown option, as well as two that would keep the station at the airport. Of the five, the downtown location was found to be the priciest, but also the one with the greatest potential economic impact. In December 2018, an engineering study was commissioned to further examine the cost of a downtown station.

In September 2018, South Bend sent roughly 20 members of its fire department's Swift Water Rescue Group to Raleigh, North Carolina, to assist in anticipation of Hurricane Florence.

Buttigieg's budget proposal for the 2018 fiscal year included items to address various public health concerns, including funding for a "healthy homes" program, which was ultimately included in the 2018 budget approved by the Common Council. Buttigieg also made a request for $24 million to fund new green spaces in the city that was ultimately excluded from the budget.

In 2018, Women's Care Center, a crisis pregnancy center chain, petitioned the city to allow it to rezone a residential property to allow it to open a location adjacent to a planned Whole Woman's Health abortion clinic (which would be the only abortion clinic in the city, which had been without one since 2015). The rezoning case became a flashpoint between local anti-abortion activists supporting the rezoning and abortion-rights activists opposing it. In April 2018, the city council voted 5–4 to allow the rezoning. The group Pro Choice South Bend, which opposed the rezoning, organized a letter-writing campaign and other efforts to urge Buttigieg to use his veto power to block the rezoning. Amid this, Buttigieg's office reportedly reached out to Whole Woman's Health Alliance and discussed various concerns. Four days after the Common Council's vote to approve the rezoning, Buttigieg vetoed it, in a decision he described as "one of the hardest decisions I've ever made" as mayor. In a letter to Common Council members, Buttigieg said he was persuaded by data provided by the abortion clinic showing that there were higher rates of threats, harassment, and violence at abortion clinics near crisis pregnancy centers, but was careful not to criticize the crisis pregnancy center, writing that he believed that representatives of both the abortion clinic and the crisis pregnancy center "are good residents who seek to support women by providing services consistent with their values." In a press conference he held to explain his veto, he declared, "Issues on the morality or the legality of abortion are dramatically beyond my pay grade as mayor. For us this is a neighborhood issue, and it's a zoning issue." In mid-May 2018, Buttigieg said he was willing to work with Women's Care Center to find a different location in the area. Women's Care Center eventually opened at a location across the street from the planned abortion clinic. When Buttigieg ran for president, some criticized his assistance to Women's Care Center as a failure to stick strongly to his abortion-rights position.

Also in 2018, Buttigieg explored annexing several areas bordering the city and redrawing the boundaries of several of the city's tax increment financing districts to better serve neighborhoods that had not benefited from redevelopment.

In August 2018, South Bend pledged a $3.7 million bond issue to assist the Potawatomi Zoo in funding its renovations. In September, it was announced that the zoo renovation had obtained additional funding from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation's Regional Cities Initiative.

In August 2018, Buttigieg declared an intent to include a focus on neighborhoods in his budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year. In addition to improvements to infrastructure, such as streetlights, Buttigieg also promoted the expansion of the city's Group Violence Intervention efforts, which he believed were showing success at reducing violent crime among the city's youth. The Common Council approved many of Buttigieg's requests in its 2019 budget.

For the 2018 midterms, Buttigieg founded the political action committee Hitting Home PAC. That October, Buttigieg personally endorsed 21 congressional candidates. He also later endorsed Mel Hall, Democratic nominee in the election for Indiana's 2nd congressional district. Buttigieg also campaigned in support of Joe Donnelly's reelection campaign in the United States Senate election in Indiana. Buttigieg campaigned for candidates in more than a dozen states, including early presidential primary states such as Iowa and South Carolina, a move indicating potential interest in running for president.

In December 2018, Buttigieg announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend. In February 2019, 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 ads for Mueller and donated to Mueller's campaign. Mueller won the May 2019 Democratic primary with 37% of the vote in a crowded field. In the November 2019 general election, Mueller defeated Republican nominee Sean M. Haas with 63% of the vote. Mueller took office on New Year's Day 2020.

In 2018, Buttigieg said he favored Medicare for All. During his presidential campaign, Buttigieg has promoted "Medicare for All Who Want It" (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."

By 2019, the city had seen $374 million in private investment for mixed-use developments since Buttigieg had taken office. In 2016, the City of South Bend partnered with the State of Indiana and private developers to break ground on a $165 million renovation of the former Studebaker complex, with the aim to make the complex home to tech companies and residential condos. This development is in the so-called "Renaissance District", which includes nearby Ignition Park. In 2017, it was announced that the long-abandoned Studebaker Building 84 (also known as "Ivy Tower") would have its exterior renovated with $3.5 million in Regional Cities funds from the State of Indiana and $3.5 million from South Bend tax increment financing, with plans for the building and other structures in its complex to serve as a technology hub. While many aspects of South Bend had improved by 2016, a Princeton University study found that the rate of evictions in the city had worsened, more than doubling since Buttigieg took office.

In January 2019, Buttigieg launched the South Bend Home Repair initiative. This expanded the existing South Bend Home Repair Pilot, which helps make available funds to assist residents with home repairs, through the use of $600,000 in city funding (double what the city had earlier pledged to the program) and $300,000 in block grants. It also created two new programs. The first of these is the South Bend Green Corps, which makes funds available to lower-income homeowners for such uses as energy-saving measures and basic weatherization, the installation of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, lead tests, and energy bill review. It also provides education on reducing energy bills. The South Bend Green Corps was funded with $290,000 from the city and $150,000 from AmeriCorps. The second program is Love Your Block, which assists citizen groups and local nonprofits in revitalizing neighborhoods, and which was funded with $25,000 from the city and $25,000 from the nonprofit Cities of Service.

In September 2019, the city of South Bend finalized a long-anticipated agreement with St. Joseph County to jointly fund the county's $18 million share of the project to double-track the South Shore Line.

In 2019, South Bend launched Commuters Trust, a new transportation benefit program created in collaboration with local employers and transportation providers (including South Bend TRANSPO and Lyft) and made possible by a $1 million three-year grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge.

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. Body cameras were not turned on during Logan's death. Soon after Logan's death, Buttigieg presided over a town hall 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. In November 2019, Buttigieg secured $180,000 to commission a review of South Bend's police department policies and practices to be conducted by Chicago-based consulting firm 21CP Solutions.

On January 23, 2019, Buttigieg announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States in the upcoming 2020 election. Buttigieg sought the Democratic Party nomination for president. If he had been elected, he would have been the youngest and first openly gay American president. Buttigieg officially launched his campaign on April 14, 2019, in South Bend.

In July 2019, Buttigieg shared his "Douglass Plan", named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to address systemic racism in America. The initiative would allocate $10 billion to African-American entrepreneurship over five years, grant $25 billion to historically black colleges, legalize marijuana, expunge drug convictions, halve the federal prison population, and propose a federal New Voting Rights Act designed to increase voting access.

In 2019, he called for the U.S. to "decriminalize mental illness and addiction through diversion, treatment, and re-entry programs" with a goal of decreasing "the number of people incarcerated due to mental illness or substance use by 75% in the first term."

In July 2019, he released a plan to strengthen union bargaining power, to raise the minimum wage to $15, and to offer national paid family leave.

Buttigieg called for modifying the structure of defense spending, while suggesting that he might favor an overall increase in defense spending. During a speech in June 2019 at Indiana University, Buttigieg called for realigning priorities in military spending "to adequately prepare for our evolving security challenges" rather than for past threats, saying, "In the coming decades, we are more likely than ever to face insurgencies, asymmetric attacks, and high-tech strikes with cyberweapons or drones. Yet our latest defense budget calls for spending more on 3 Virginia-class submarines—$10.2 billion—than on cyberdefenses. It proposes spending more on a single frigate than on artificial intelligence and machine learning."

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.

In August 2019, Buttigieg released a $300 billion plan to expand mental health care services and fight addiction.

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a watershed moment in the LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named him one of its "Pride50" people identified as "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".

Buttigieg finished second behind Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. After placing a fourth in the South Carolina primary with 8.2% of the vote, behind Joe Biden (48.7%), Bernie Sanders (19.8%), and Tom Steyer (11.3%); he dropped out of the race on March 1, 2020 and endorsed Biden.

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 it had hired Buttigieg as a teacher and researcher for the 2020–21 academic year.

On September 5, 2020, Buttigieg was announced to be a member of the advisory council of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, which is planning the presidential transition of Joe Biden.

Since the end of his presidential campaign, Buttigieg was mentioned as a possible cabinet appointee in Joe Biden's administration. After Biden was declared the winner of the election on November 7, 2020, Buttigieg was again mentioned as a possible nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs or Ambassador to the United Nations.

During his 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination, Buttigieg proposed spending $1 trillion on U.S. infrastructure projects over the next 10 years, estimating that the plan would create at least 6 million jobs. The plan focused on green energy, protecting tap water from lead, fixing roads and bridges, improving public transportation, repairing schools, guaranteeing broadband internet access, and preparing communities for floods and other natural disasters.

In September 2020, Buttigieg officiated the wedding of his mayoral successor James Mueller.