Buttigieg, Pete, 1982-

<p>Pete Buttigieg is the secretary of transportation in the Biden administration. The Senate confirmed him on February 2, 2021, by a vote of 86-13. He is the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a Cabinet position.</p>

<p>Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, winning elections in 2011 and 2015. He announced he was running for president of the United States on January 23, 2019. He suspended his presidential campaign on March 1, 2020, and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden (D) the following day.</p>

<p>Buttigieg was also a 2017 candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He announced his candidacy for DNC chair on January 5, 2017. Buttigieg withdrew his candidacy prior to the first round of voting at the DNC meeting on February 25, 2017.</p>

<p>Buttigieg also served as the president of the Indiana Urban Mayors Caucus.</p>

One important key to the myth that tends to be built up around polyglots is the vaporous quality of numbers of languages. How many languages can Buttigieg actually speak? His campaign confirmed eight when I reached out: English, Norwegian, Spanish, French, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, and Dari. A specific count of languages, though, can also be an unreliable credential for any polyglot, because a language isn’t a defined unit of measure.

Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg; born January 19, 1982) is an American politician and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who is President Joe Biden's nominee for the position of United States secretary of transportation. He was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, earning him the nickname "Mayor Pete".

Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and Oxford University, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. From 2009 to 2017, he was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was mobilized and deployed to the War in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014. Before being elected as Mayor of South Bend in 2012, Buttigieg worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, Joe Donnelly, and John Kerry. While serving as mayor, Buttigieg came out as gay in 2015. He married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher, writer, and LGBTQ rights advocate, in June 2018. Buttigieg declined to seek a third term as mayor.

Buttigieg ran as a candidate for president in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, launching his campaign for the 2020 United States presidential election on April 14, 2019. He became the first openly gay person to launch a major presidential campaign.[12] Despite initially low expectations, he gained significant momentum in mid-2019 when he participated in several town halls and debates. Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and placed second in the New Hampshire primary. By winning Iowa, he became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential primary or caucus.[16] Buttigieg dropped out of the race on March 1, 2020, and endorsed Joe Biden the following day.

In December 2020, President-elect Biden named Buttigieg as his nominee to be Secretary of Transportation. He is the first openly gay Cabinet nominee in U.S. history.