Why the Midwest’s Mayor-for-President Is Focused on the Future of Work

“I’m not like the others,” Pete Buttigieg says of the more than a dozen Democrats he’ll be running for President of the United States against in 2020. He’s a gay millennial. He’s an Afghanistan veteran. And, as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he’s one of the few Midwesterners on the ticket so far, joined by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who announced her candidacy in a snowstorm last week; and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who hasn’t yet declared but is edging closer each day.

Buttigieg’s small-town leadership experience has helped solidify his status as an underdog, a narrative that’s okay for a baseball team but worse for a political ascendant who depends on donations. It’s not that being a city leader is necessarily a liability. Buttigieg is far from the only mayor or former mayor running: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio just got back from Iowa, a sign that he’s considering joining former Newark, New Jersey, mayor Cory Booker and former Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders on the trail. Still, South Bend is a small, under-the-radar locale with a population just over 100,000; and unlike Booker and Sanders, who are both senators now, running the city since 2011 is Buttigieg’s highest-level political experience so far.