Who is Pete Buttigieg? Democratic mayor joins 2020 presidential race

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced Tuesday that he’s forming an exploratory committee ahead of a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“Right now, our country needs a fresh start,” Buttigieg said in a video announcing his plan to run. “We can't just polish off a system so broken. It is a season for boldness and a focus on the future."

Here are some things to know about Buttigieg:

• Buttigieg was born Jan. 19, 1982, in South Bend.
• His name is pronounced "BOO'-tah-juhj," according to The Associated Press.
• Buttigieg studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford in England as a Rhodes scholar. He has a bachelor's degree in history and literature from Harvard University. From 2009 to 2017, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
• Voters elected Buttigieg to serve as mayor of South Bend in 2011, making him the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents, the AP reported. In 2017, he ran unsuccessfully for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
• Buttigieg came out as gay in a 2015 column for the South Bend Tribune while he was running for his second term as the city's mayor.
  "We Midwesterners are instinctively private to begin with, and I'm not used to viewing this as anyone else's business," he wrote in the column. "But it's clear to me that at a moment like this, being more open about it could do some good. For a local student struggling with her sexuality, it might be helpful for an openly gay mayor to send the message that her community will always have a place for her."
• Buttigieg describes himself as an "active musician" who plays piano and guitar. He has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra.
• Buttigieg married Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher at a Montessori Academy in Mishawaka, Indiana, in 2018, according to The New York Times.

Cox Media Group