July 2019 | Rolling Stone | 67
ard Dean, his candidate in 2004. Another consultant
who ran a general-election campaign tells me that he
is hugely impressed by Buttigieg, but adds, “What
state can he win? I have trouble coming up with one.”
(Back home in Indiana, Buttigieg’s in third, behind
Biden and Sanders.)
Buttigieg is currently polling on the medal stand in
New Hampshire and Iowa. But when the campaign
turns to the more racially diverse part of the coun-
try, he faces trouble. Then there’s the feat of trying
to build a national organization overnight. Trippi has
worked on six presidential campaigns, lunched with
Mayor Pete before he declared and admires Buttigieg,
but he fears it can’t be done.
“You are in a home-built contraption that’s never
been flight-tested,” says Trippi. “That’s everything
from inexperienced staff, to a first-time candidate, to
just trying to hire people fast enough and put them
in the right roles. At the same time, you’ve got to
raise the money. You’re rolling down the runway and
somebody’s screaming that they just finally got the al-
timeter into the instrument board.”P
ETE BUTTIGIEG DOES NOT turn down the
media. Ever.
It’s primary election day in South Bend
for the race to name Buttigieg’s successor,
so the mayor is back in town — he’s been away from
his paying job for 40 of the past 90 days. He is at his
campaign office doing an interview with the Skimm,
a news site for millennial women that will give you
the world in 120 seconds. He has sipped some whis-key with the correspondent for some reason. The
crew is now filming B-roll, and Buttigieg is walking
up and down a hallway. The camera operator misses
something, and Buttigieg has to do it again. His face
reddens not out of anger but embarrassment. Butti-
gieg has an idea.
“How about this time I walk out the door so it
looks like I’m going somewhere?” he asks.
A few minutes later, the twentysomething crew
high-five each other and disappear. Buttigieg wan-
ders down a hallway, says hello to a campaign staff-
er and pets a puppy she is training to be a service
dog. I followed Buttigieg for two weeks from South
Carolina to South Bend to Chicago, ending in Iowa.
The thing that stuck with me is that Buttigieg comes
across as a normal human, whether he was facing aTHE DOG WHISPERER
Buttigieg’s South Bend, Indiana, campaign headquarters is divided into
two wings: Truman and Buddy, named after Buttigieg and his husband’s two
rescue dogs. “The biggest thing that I have going for me,” the candidate says,
“is that people view me as what you see is what you get.”