The smalltown mayor with the unusual name has overtaken some betterknown rivals. This spring raising nearly 25 million. Feels good . Yeah, but the important thing, of course, is what are you going to do with it . But does he have what it takes to go the distance . Wheres the national experience, wheres the seasoning . The candidate with the compelling personal story there was no way to deny that i was very much in love. Is also facing questions that could threaten his surging campaign. What matters about a black life to you, mayor pete . You have very angry people in this community. Do you understand why . Is he going to do better with black voters . I cant imagine he can do worse at this point. Will the very things that make this young intellectual and openly gay candidate unique help or hinder his historic run for the white house . Im Jacob Soboroff here in south bend, indiana, the hometown, of course, of south bend mayor and president ial hopeful Pete Buttigieg. On this headliners mayor pete as hes become to be known on his home turf. Can he break away from the pack of democrats to take on donald trump and make history . Why you . Why are you the guy to take him down . Because we need a different kind of messenger. We need somebody who is thinking about the deep issues in our country that got us here. And i think it wouldnt hurt to have somebody from a new generation, but more than anything else, we need to put forward somebody who understands that back to normal isnt going to be a winning message. We got to be ready to propose something new because the world were stepping into is new. Buttigieg buttigieg in april, he entered a crowded democratic field as an unknown. With a last name that was hard to announce. Pete buttigieg. Buttigieg. Buttibatta. Edge, edge. Pete buttigieg, did i get it okay . How am i doing . Close enough. But as Campaign Signs broke it down syllable by syllable Buttigieg Buttigieg the 37yearold candidate won the attention of latenight hosts and the media. The future is here, america. Im a little green, but im fresh, instagramable, and ultimately good for you. Im the avocado toast of the Democratic Party. My guest tonight is the mayor of south bend, indiana. Live from uptown, mayor, homie pete in the building. Welcome mayor Pete Buttigieg. When he didnt have a lot of Campaign Money, he did have time, and he used that time to go on tv, radio, and podcasts to try to introduce himself. That is why he caught fire. The young candidate even caught an insult from President Trump who compared him to mad magazines cover boy. Last night i watched alfred e. Newman. Buttigieg shot back to a political reporter. Ill be honest, i had to google that. I guess its a generational thing. Ten weeks after his announcement, the candidate raised nearly 25 million, outpacing his opponents, drawing from grassroots donations and highend hollywood fundraisers. Can you keep that up . What matters most is not the bragging rights. Although of course im proud to have led the field. Feels good . Yeah, but the important thing, of course, is what are you going to do with it . How can we use the resources we gathered to put organizers on the ground . The whole point of the fundraising is to make sure the ground game can deliver victories for us in the primaries. While buttigieg started out as a darling of the media, hes been dogged by a persistent problem. He hasnt yet been able to win the support of africanamericans. Is that your biggest challenge as a candidate, winning over africanamerican voters at this point . Weve got all kinds of challenges because were new on the scene and weve got to get our message out and not only consolidate our position in the top tier, but move into the lead by the time the voting happens. But one of our Top Priorities is making sure that we have connected not only to ask black voters to support me, but to invite them to help shape the campaign and make sure that i am speaking to their concerns. Hi this is the only chance youll ever get to vote for a maltese american lefthanded episcopalian war veteran mayor its surreal, its crazy. Mike schmuhl has known Pete Buttigieg since they were boys. Today hes his campaign manager. I tell the team were not just building an airplane as were taking off, that were building a rocket ship as were blasting off into space. The speed is that fast. Its that intense. Every single day. But the rise of the candidate with the carefully cultivated resume and polished demeanor has raised inevitable questions. A sterling resume if youre looking at president ial politics, but hes only in his mid 30s. Hes only served as mayor of a small city in the midwest. Where is the national experience, where is the seasoning . Is he going to get to the kind of numbers that make him effective in iowa . There are black people in iowa. There are latinos in iowa. There are latinos and africanamericans in new hampshire. Hows he going to do in nevada . Let alone by the time we get to south carolina. This isnt the first time buttigieg has auditioned for the national stage. In 2017 the then 34yearold tried to raise his National Profile by run for the chair of the Democratic National committee. Pete caught my eye when he was running for chairman of the dnc. Ive long believed the Democratic Party needs to be taken over by 35yearolds. Former president ial contender howard dean was a mentor to buttigieg on his shortlived campaign for dnc chair. The dnc people loved him and he was the symbol of a new generation. The dnc didnt really want a new generation, but they know they have to have one. When it was evident that he wasnt going to win, he decided not to be on the ballot. That was very smart. He does have an instinct for when to hold em and when to fold em. That you cant buy and you cant teach it, either. Thats going to stand him in good stead as he goes through the primary process. The funny thing is there were people then who said, you know, i think you would make a great president. But im not going to vote for you for dnc chair and explain all the reasons why. Two years later, Pete Buttigieg took their praise to heart. My name is Pete Buttigieg. They call me mayor pete. I am a proud son of south bend, indiana, and i am running for president of the United States. What is your political ideology . I view myself as a progressive, but i also am aware of living if a moment where a lot of the ideological frameworks i grew up with are becoming less and less useful. Youve got a president who doesnt even have an ideology. A month and half into his run, many voters still didnt have a clear idea of the candidates platform. People have knocked you for not coming out with very detailed, specific policy proposals. A policy geek, way that you actually. But precisely for that reason. Im going to make sure that before we get into the guts of our proposals which weve done more and more, were trying to make sure people understand where all of this is coming from to begin with. The reason you put forward these policies is not just to signal what youre going to do but to signal whats important to you. Buttigieg has recently begun to reveal some of his policies. Hes been talking about scrapping the electoral college, enacting commonsense gun laws start with universal background checks. And expanding the number of judges on the Supreme Court as a way to make it less partisan. On health care, he advocates gradually moving toward a singlepayer system, proposing medicare for all who want it. We make it available for people to buy into, optional, as something that is available through the exchanges. Hes against President Trumps policies at the border. And he wants a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the u. S. In june, he gave his first major Foreign Policy speech. Thank you. Expressing views shaped by his experiences as a veteran and as a member of the 9 11 generation. We must put an end to endless war and refocus on future threats. We must treat Climate Change as the existential security challenge that it is. You will not see me exchanging love letters on white house letterhead with a brutal dictator. Buttigieg notably has turned to Foreign Policy to try to signal to voters that he is ready for the presidency. On the stump, hes now referring to his presidency as what would president buttigieg do . Like other young idealistic progressives, buttigieg sees National Politics as being out of touch with his generation. I often speak of the need for our politics and policies to contemplate the year 2054. The year in which i hope to retire after reaching the current age of the current president. [ laughter ] the candidate believes his own party has gone off track. I think our values have been the right ones all along, but weve got a little muddled in how we define them, how we explain them. And what im trying to do is say, okay, if the Republican Party didnt even exist, what would we be for . Faith is one of the values that buttigieg embraces on the campaign trail. As a practicing episcopalian, he hopes to reclaim religion from the republicans. And this is the year we come together and assert that god does not belong to a political party. Least of all the one in charge right now. Coming up, where the candidates interest in politics all began. Congressman, why are you the only president ial candidate not attending tomorrows youthoriented rock the vote forum, and do you think young peoples votes matter in your campaign . Great presentation, tim. Could you email me the part about geico making it easy to switch and save hundreds . Oh yeah, sure. Um. You dont know my name, do you . laughs nervously of course i know your name. I just get you mixed up with the other guy. Whats his name . Whats your name . Switch to geico®. You could save 15 or more on Car Insurance. Could you just tell me . I want this to be over. Hey. You must be stevens phone. Now you can know whos on your network and control who shouldnt be, only with xfinity xfi. Simple. Easy. Awesome. I just remember being struck by how strange it was that a guy running for mayor of south bend had a Dave Matthews band poster hanging in his bedroom. The unlikely mayoral candidate with a thing for alternative rock, Pete Buttigieg grew up as an only child. His early musical abilities were encouraged by his parents. Both notre dame professors. His father, joseph, who emigrated from malta, and his mother, jennifer anne, surrounded pete with ideas, culture, and liberal values. You know, my parents in hindsight gave me a pretty long leash to go out, do my thing, get in trouble a little bit, and kind of find my way. And made it clear that they loved me, trusted me, and had High Expectations for me, too. As a little kid, you Start Playing piano, right . Uhhuh. Yeah. Start taking lessons when i was 5. 5 years old. And you wanted to play with the symphony here. What else did you do for fun as a kid . You know, i was obsessed with baseball cards. I wasnt actually that interested in baseball but the baseball cards, i had to have them, alphabetize them, count them. Did you have them in the plastic absolutely. Me, too. In high school, petes hobbies took a more serious turn when he started organizing afterschool programs for amnesty international. It seems to me you knew pretty early on you wanted to get into Public Service. Yeah, i was always interested in it. I didnt always know it would be kind of a calling. Most of my teenage years i wanted to be a pilot or astronaut. I think by the time i got to college, i knew in some way, shape or form i wanted to be part of public life. Whats the first time you remember thinking about running for president of the United States . I remember it was kind of a class joke in high school when i was a senior because i was a senior class president , but im not sure i took it very seriously at the time. I think most folks in high school would have said if theres somebody whos going to go on and be maybe special and be involved in Public Service and maybe become president one day, i think a lot of people would have picked pete. I think in the yearbook, they may have said most likely to become president. In his senior year, pete won a National Essay contest sponsored by the john f. Kennedy president ial library. He chose to write about a politician that he admired. A littleknown congressman from vermont, bernie sanders. Why did you write that essay . So the prompt for the essay contest was to describe somebody who lived up to the idea of political courage. And i was looking at the news and looking around me and felt like there wasnt a lot of political courage in either party. And then you see this guy, this obscure member of congress out of vermont, bernie sanders, who says exactly what he believes, even though it would be suicidal in many places, politically, to do it. Says hes a socialist. It was fascinating to see somebody who was that clear about what he believed in. As valedictorian of st. Josephs of 2000, he earned a prize spot at harvard university. But took time to adjust to life in the ivy league. When i showed up at harvard, i wondered how id measure up. I felt like i was on top of my game in south bend and you get there and everybody was top of their class. I felt like id been admitted to the academy of the xmen and i was the only one who didnt know what my special power was. Buttigieg soon hit his stride, made a tight circle of friends, and discovered what would become a lifelong passion for languages. He speaks seven and uses them on the campaign trail with the press. [ speaking Foreign Language ] his love or politics led him to harvards institute of politics. When hardball visited the campus in 2003 for a college tour, he challenged democratic congressman and president ial hopeful dick gephardt. Congressman, why are you the only president ial candidate not attending tomorrows youthoriented rock the vote forum . Do you think young people count in your campaign . They matter a lot, thats why im here tonight. Buttigieg finally found his special power at harvard, politics. Majoring in literature, he graduated magna cum laude. And achieved an even higher honor, a Rhodes Scholarship to study at oxford. The story i wanted to ask you about is theres a story you went out to sea on a cargo ship, a solitary journey out to sea to prepare for a final exam. Is that true . Yeah. The oxford system, the exams are everything. They account for 100 of your grades. The essays dont count. Lectures dont count. Its about the exams you take in a matter of days. As the exams were approaching, i thought, i got to hunker down and get ready for this. I knew if i was close to my friends, close to the pub, close to the internet, i might have trouble concentrating. So i threw the toughest books that i needed to master into a backpack and theres this way you could arrange with this German Company that they put you in an unused cabin on a cargo container ship. It was pretty cheap. I guarantee you there will be feature stories on Television News about people going to do that because you did it and youre running for president. Study at sea worked. Buttigieg earned oxfords highest grade that year in the universitys philosophy, politics, and economics program. With his options wide open, he accepted an offer from mckinsey, the Global Consulting giant with a roster of clients from 400500 companies to authoritarian governments. His first project there, a comprehensive study on Grocery Store pricing. It wasnt a conversation starter but taught him the field of data analytics, which would come in handy down the road. Buttigiegs experience at mckinsey helped him understand how corporations worked and when he became mayor of south bend, he used that experience at mckinsey to understand, how can you bring jobs back, how can you convince through tax credits or innovation to bring major corporations to invest in a city like south bend . After three years of mckinsey, buttigieg moved back home to indiana where he made a bold career shift. At just 29, he decided that he had the right stuff to run for mayor of south bend. I just hope people really focus on the issues, you know. This is a chance to really talk about what we want our city to look like going forward. When he was running for mayor back in 2011, he was still, i think, coming out of his shell, but i think he was becoming more comfortable with public life and campaigning and going up to strangers and saying, hey, im pete. I remember one instance, we walked into an older polish hall on the west side of south bend. And we had just kicked off the Mayoral Campaign and he goes, well, what should i do . And i said, youre going to shake every hand in this room then youre going to come back and then were going to have dinner together. And thats what he did. An upstart candidate whod never held elected office, buttigieg campaigned on the promise of remaking south bend. He even managed to get the support of the citys chamber of commerce. He won in a landslide. A young man with a funny name and no political experience managed to win the confidence of a community at a turning point. But what had he inherited . In 2011, newsweek was calling south bend one of the nations ten dying cities. The new mayor had a plan to change that. First he always said, the basics should be easy, that is, we should be picking up the trash. Mark neal served as the new mayors city controller. So youll see pete even today, he loves riding around in a garbage truck with the sanitation folks looking at what the Newest Technology is, right . From trash collection to traffic and sewers, mayor pete was on a mission to bring