Democratic 2020 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg took a swipe at Congress after critics suggested he should have run for federal office before launching a White House bid.
Buttigieg, 37, the outgoing two-term mayor of South Bend, Ind., made the comments one day after announcing he had formed a presidential exploratory committee to fundraise ahead of an official campaign.
“Are we really so sure that serving in that legislative body, crucially important though it is, is more weighty and more demanding and more relevant today than the experience of leading a city of any size as it faces its biggest opportunities and challenges? I doubt that,” Buttigieg told the United States Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting in Washington, D.C., citing the ongoing partial government shutdown.
“We cannot keep doing what we’ve been doing, especially in Washington, we need something completely different. And that just might mean sending a mayor to the White House.”
“I mean, no disrespect to the United States Congress, but that is a very different job, and I would argue that our country right now would be a better place if Congress looked more like the community of American mayors and not the other way around,” he said.
[Read more: 45 Democrats jostling to challenge Trump in 2020]
Buttigieg, a gay, married, Afghanistan war veteran educated at Harvard and Oxford universities, acknowledged “the audacity of running for president” at age 37. Instead, he said being a millennial made him more competitive in what is likely to be a crowded primary field.
“We will not find greatness in the past. Trying to dredge it up from some impossible ‘again.’ There is no ‘again’ in the real world, there’s no going back,” he said. “Conservatives cannot go back to the 1950s and Democrats cannot go back to the 1990s.”
Buttigieg is joined by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as well as Reps. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and John Delaney of Maryland, in making White House bids. Obama administration housing secretary Julian Castro and West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda are also declared candidates. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio has also entered the fray with a bus tour of early-voting states.
