Reuters
- President-elect Joe Biden will select Pete Buttigieg to lead the Department of Transportation, according to Reuters.
- If confirmed, Buttigieg would become the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in US history to be approved by the Senate.
- In nominating Buttigieg to the role, Biden aims to put the 38-year-old former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate in charge of a sprawling federal agency with roughly 58,000 employees.
- Buttigieg, who ran against Biden in the Democratic primaries, won the Iowa caucuses in February 2020 and came in second place in the New Hampshire primary before losing momentum and suspending his campaign.
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President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Pete Buttigieg to lead the Department of Transportation, Reuters and The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
If confirmed by the Senate, Buttigieg would become the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in US history to be approved by the upper chamber.
In nominating Buttigieg, Biden aims to put the 38-year-old former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate in charge of a sprawling federal agency with roughly 58,000 employees. The agency is tasked with planning and coordinating federal transportation projects, along with overseeing transportation safety regulations throughout the country.
Buttigieg, a South Bend native, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2004. He was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics.
In 2011, Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend, a Midwestern city of nearly 102,000 residents best known for its close connection with the University of Notre Dame. From 2009 to 2017, Buttigieg served as an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve, where he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014, temporarily handing over management of the city to a deputy mayor during his seven-month absence.
Buttigieg was easily reelected as mayor in 2015, winning with more than 80 percent of the vote.
In June 2018, he married his partner, Chasten Glezman, at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James in South Bend.
In April 2019, Buttigieg formally announced his presidential campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, seeking to represent a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party. He faced an array of well-known party figures during his campaign, including Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who's now the vice president-elect, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro, among others.
However, Buttigieg became a breakout star of the campaign - he won the Iowa caucus in February 2020 and finished a close second to Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. His momentum was blunted with Biden's overwhelming victory in the South Carolina Democratic Primary later that month, though, as his electoral weakness with Black voters, a crucial part of the Democratic coalition, proved incredibly difficult to improve on in just a matter of weeks.
Sensing a difficult path forward for the nomination, Buttigieg suspended his presidential campaign in March and quickly endorsed Biden.
After Buttigieg withdrew from the presidential race, Biden spoke of the former mayor in glowing terms, saying he had "unlimited potential" and even comparing him to his late son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
"I know that may not mean much to most people, but to me, it's the highest compliment I can give to any man or woman," Biden said in March 2020. "Like Beau, he has a backbone like a ramrod."
It is widely expected that Buttigieg will run for president again at some point in the future, and running a federal agency would afford the Democratic politician with valuable management experience.
On December 13, CNN first reported that Buttigieg was being considered for the transportation role, with other candidates that reportedly included Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The current transportation secretary is Elaine Chao, a former labor secretary under then-President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has served in the role since January 2017.
Buttigieg's name also emerged for other Biden administration positions, including commerce secretary; US ambassador to the United Nations, a position that ultimately went to the veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield; and secretary of veterans affairs, which Biden filled with the nomination of the former White House chief of staff Denis McDonough.