United States: the revelation of Pete Buttigieg, future Minister of Transport

Pete Buttigieg will not have launched into the US presidential election for nothing. If he ended up giving up to support Joe Biden, he had however scored a lot of points in the Democratic primary and had even been in the end the revelation. His face should not soon fall into oblivion across the Atlantic since the elected president has just chosen him to join his government. Pete Buttigieg will thus be the Minister of Transport of the Biden administration. This makes him the openly gay American prime minister.

His appointment, which was first announced by the American media, was confirmed Tuesday evening by the president-elect’s team. “I trust Pete to do this job with focus, morality and bold vision,” Joe Biden said in a statement. This choice must be validated by a vote of the Senate.

A historic appointment for some

After choosing Kamala Harris to run alongside him for the vice-presidency, it is the second former rival of the primary that Joe Biden decides to integrate into his team. At 38, the former mayor of South Bend, a mid-size town in Indiana state, is one of the only political tenors so far chosen by the 70-year-old Democrat Biden to enter his government, moreover composed of specialists or technocrats. He is also one of the few personalities who was not a member of former President Barack Obama’s team, when Joe Biden was vice president, from 2009 to 2017.

If the Senate approves his appointment, “Mayor Pete” would become “the first openly LGBT person appointed to a permanent position in the presidential cabinet,” said the organization Victory Institute, which campaigns for personalities from sexual minorities rise to executive positions. The Human Rights Campaign association also welcomed a “historic” decision. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “keep their promise” by “forming a government that reflects America’s diversity,” she said.

Rising star of the Democratic Party

Almost unknown to the general public when he presented his candidacy for the Democratic primaries for the presidential election last November in April 2019, Pete Buttigieg, a former soldier who went through Afghanistan, had a meteoric career. A moderate candidate, he had recorded spectacular success in the early stages of the primaries, when Joe Biden, a seasoned politician positioned on the same centrist niche, suffered disappointment after disappointment despite his status as favorite.

The former vice president had finally managed to bounce back and Pete Buttigieg stepped down to his advantage in early March, helping to give decisive momentum to the one who is forty years his senior. “It reminds me of my son, Beau”, who died of brain cancer, then declared Joe Biden. “It’s the best compliment I can give a man,” he added alongside the rising star of the Democratic Party, passed through Harvard, Oxford and the McKinsey consulting firm.

A minister who will have to meet several challenges

The former multilingual candidate, he speaks seven languages, married in church to her husband Chasten Buttigieg, had then actively participated in the media in the victorious campaign of Joe Biden. The one to whom Democratic strategists still lend views on the White House, perhaps as early as the 2024 election if Joe Biden only serves one term, will in any case be at the heart of the Democratic President’s effort to renovate the country’s infrastructure.

This post is “at the intersection” of several “challenges”, recalled Joe Biden in his press release: “jobs, infrastructure, equity and climate all come together at the Ministry of Transport”. Pete Buttigieg will also have the difficult task of going to the bedside of the aviation sector, affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which has drastically reduced commercial flights.