Indiana mayor joins crowded field to lead national Democrats
INDIANAPOLIS — A little-known mayor from Indiana on Thursday joined a crowded field of candidates seeking to become the next head of the Democratic National Committee.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is barely known outside northern Indiana, but he brings a distinctive resume to the campaign as a Rhodes scholar who served a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan in 2014 as a Naval Reserve officer. He gained attention last year when he announced he was gay in a newspaper column, five months before he won election to a second term with 80 per cent of the vote.
Buttigieg (pronounced BOO’-tah-juhj) is casting himself as an outsider in the chairman’s race, which includes Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison among five other candidates.
Buttigieg, 34, said he believes the DNC needs fresh leadership and a greater focus on state and local parties after many years of election losses at those levels.