Pete Buttigieg

Gay Rust Belt Mayor Pete Buttigieg Qualifies for First Presidential Debate; Pinch Yourself

For the first time in history, an openly gay man will participate in a Democratic party presidential debate. South Bend (Indiana) Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced on Saturday, March 16 that he had reached the 65,000* individual donor goal which qualifies him to be invited to the first DNC debate (June 2019) before the 2020 presidential election. He also met the requirement that donors must come from at least 20 states.

*76,025 donors as of Saturday morning, March 16, 2019

Buttigieg is competing for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 national election. If successful, he would be the first openly gay president, as well as the youngest (39 on inauguration day 2021). Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, considering that tongue stopping last name (BOOT-edge-edge), turned in a star performance March 10, 2019, on a live CNN Town Hall held in Austin, TX. If you have not listened to this broadcast, see the YouTube link below. 

Your blogger was born (and continues to live) in the Washington DC suburbs, so I have been saturated with politics my entire life, yet I have never heard a politician speak so calmly and eloquently, with a quiet determination and assurance. He answers every question! No deflections! He mentions solutions and policies that need to be explored, all delivered with a refreshing candor and vision. And relatable. I’m still pinching myself. Consider it your civic duty to listen to the entire broadcast of 43 minutes. If nothing else, he should be hired by any candidate on how to handle an interview or town hall session.

My favorite quote from the CNN Town Hall:

When asked how he would respond to criticism from Trump:

"I'm a gay man from Indiana. I know how to handle a bully."

This man is only 37 (born January 19, 1982), openly gay (married public school teacher Chasten Glezman in June 2018; photo below), informed and eloquent. A Harvard graduate (BA) and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (MA), where he received a “first” in economics. Not to mention a veteran of the war in Afghanistan; he remains a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. Mayor Pete speaks English, Arabic, Dari, Spanish, Norwegian, French, Italian and Maltese (his father emigrated from Malta, where Buttigieg is a common name). When he ran for reelection for mayor as an out gay man in 2015, he won with more than 80% of the vote. In red state Indiana. Believe it.

P.S.: Interested in learning more about Mayor Pete? He has a new book out, a memoir -- Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future (pub. Feb. 12, 2019). The Guardian (British daily newspaper) stated that Buttigieg “has written the best political autobiography since Barack Obama”. 

An excerpt:

(Buttigieg met his husband online, and their first date included a visit to the South Bend Cubs. They made it to the sixth inning before they ditched the game for a walk by the river.)

“I felt the slight brushing of his hand coming closer to mine,” he writes, “and I took hold of it. Nothing in my life, from shaking hands with a president to experiencing my first rocket attack, matched the thrill of holding Chasten’s hand for the first time. I was electrified. We got back to the car just as the post-game fireworks began, and as the explosions and lit colors unfolded over us, he went in for a kiss … It only took a few weeks for me to acknowledge the obvious: I was in love.”

Photo below: Buttigieg upon returning from deployment in Afghanistan.

Chris Hughes & Sean Eldridge Marry

After a year-and-a-half engagement, Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge married in a civil ceremony on Saturday, June 30 before 75 guests at their 8o-acre estate in Garrison, NY. William J. Corbett, a retired village justice, was the officiant. The subsequent reception at Cipriani, an ultra- posh Manhattan restaurant, included 400 guests, among them House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), actor Kal Penn, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), TV host Gayle King, Huffington Post publisher Arianna Huffington, Facebook’s first president (and Napster founder) Sean Parker and freshly-married Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Guests were entertained by a big band jazz orchestra before a blue and white multi-tiered cake topped by two grooms, one blond and one brunette.

Just like Zuckerberg, the couple announced their marriage with a Facebook Life Event update along with a set of photographs. The moment must have been particularly sweet for Eldridge, who until a year ago was political director of the same-sex marriage advocacy group Freedom to Marry.

Mr. Hughes (holding leash, above), 28, works from New York City, Garrison NY and Washington DC as the publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic magazine (est. 1914), which he purchased last November. TNR is a highly-regarded Washington DC-based politics and arts magazine with a liberal bent. Hughes graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a degree in history and literature before taking a job in California with Facebook, which he had co-founded with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin. Hughes’ stake in the value of Facebook is today estimated to be $650-750 million. Mr. Hughes also led the online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Eldridge, 25, is the founder and treasurer of Protect Our Democracy, an advocacy group based in Garrison that seeks campaign finance reform. He is also the president of Hudson River Ventures, an investment firm. Eldridge graduated from Brown University.

Note: On the same weekend that Hughes and Eldridge married, Facebook rolled out two new timeline icons that show two little grooms (above) and two little brides, to better represent the reality of gay marriage. Previously, all Facebook marriage announcements were represented by a little cake topper icon that depicted a bride and groom. Wedding photos by Mel Barlow, posted on the Facebook page of Mr. Hughes, naturally.

The couple met in November 2005 through a college acquaintance of Mr. Eldridge’s at a brunch in Harvard Square in Cambridge MA. Mr. Eldridge was working as a customer service manager for a moving company in Somerville MA, and Mr. Hughes was a senior at Harvard. At the time Hughes was already a founder of Facebook.

“He was very intelligent and charismatic,” Chris said of Sean. “He was very kind and politically engaged, and he cared about the world around us. All of that was very attractive to me.”

Eldridge was equally attracted. A week later, he asked Chris out on a date.

“I think we shared a lot of important, common interests,” Eldridge said. “We have a love of philosophy, politics and literature. He was one of the most intelligent and ambitious people I had ever met.”

Their first date was at Temple Bar in Cambridge. Sean said that he and Chris “had a great time. It all happened very fast.”

In this YouTube clip filmed two weeks after he became engaged to Hughes, Sean Eldridge delivers a short speech about the urgency of working for the right of same sex couples to marry. Inspiring.