A presidential candidate spoke at a packed house at a fund-raising event at Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg Monday night.
Pete Buttigieg, who has been the mayor of South Bend, Ind., for nearly eight years, made the trip to Brooklyn after he announced his presidential campaign on Sunday.
“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,” he said to thunderous applause at the April 14 announcement in South Bend.
The Democrat would be the first openly gay president if elected, and at 37 years old, the youngest, too. The minimum age to run for president is 35.
Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend — where he grew up —in 2011 when he was 29 years old and was re-elected in 2015 with 80 percent of the vote.
He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and is a graduate of Harvard University. He served as a lieutenant in the Afghanistan War and earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his counterterrorism work.
He developed his political skills working on the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign, the Obama campaign in 2008, and other campaigns. He boosted his profile in 2017 when he ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee, though he withdrew from the race before the 2018 vote. He lost a 2010 race for Indiana state treasurer before becoming mayor of South Bend in 2011.
