An old yearbook superlative from 2000 of Democratic White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg has resurfaced this week. The verdict? “Most likely to become president.”
Katie Kowals, a nurse at the Memorial Hospital in Buttigieg’s native South Bend, Ind., said her brother-in-law knows “Mayor Pete” from their days together in St. Joseph’s High School well. Recounting some of those high school memories with Buttigieg, she says his classmates overwhelmingly voted for him most likely to lead the nation, adding that he always carried himself with the allure of leadership and importance.
“Mayor Pete was also voted most likely to become president in our yearbook,” Kowals told ABC. Kowals says that Buttigieg “was exactly as he is now.”
In the yearbook, Kowals’ brother-in-law is pictured with Buttigieg and other friends with the superlative written across the bottom of the photo.
you want high-school yearbook photos of Mayor @PeteButtigieg? We’ve got ’em – “most likely to become president,” St. Joseph HS, Class of 2000. https://t.co/kjDKE0jBTx @GarciaReports @mattgutmanABC
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) April 19, 2019
Buttigieg, 37, attended Harvard University after he graduated from St. Joseph’s High School. He was also a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. Prior to becoming mayor of his native town of South Bend, Buttigieg served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014. The first openly gay man to run for the Democratic nomination, Buttigieg married his husband, Chasten, last year.
The mayor’s campaign has raised more than $7 million in the first quarter of the year, according to the Federal Elections Commission. Buttigieg’s campaign has qualified for the first presidential debate, set in Miami, Fla., this June.
