Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg plans to visit battleground states and areas that are considered weak for the Democratic Party during the 2026 election cycle as speculation mounts about him launching a 2028 presidential campaign.
The one-time presidential candidate has visited 10 states so far this year and is intent on hitting more stops as the midterm elections get underway, according to Politico.
Buttigieg dedicated his recent trips to Pennsylvania and Georgia to stumping for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.
The former Biden official stopped by the Lehigh Valley earlier this month to hold an event with Bob Brooks, who’s running to flip Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District by defeating incumbent Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA). Buttigieg did the same in former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s deep-red congressional district, where he campaigned for Democrat Shawn Harris last weekend ahead of Georgia’s April 7 runoff election.
In Alabama, Buttigieg stood in solidarity with the black community in Selma to commemorate the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday — a turning point for the 1960s Civil Rights movement. During his outreach visit, he also spoke at a unity breakfast and a local Baptist church.
In a new interview with Politico, the former Cabinet secretary explained his 2026 strategy is to visit as many states as possible to reach ordinary voters.
“We’re trying to get everywhere we can,” he said. “Including places in the same way that — you know, I think Fox News is this kind of place — places where people don’t hear enough from us, because I think there are potential members of our coalition to be found.”
Buttigieg revealed he wants to help build a Democratic version of the populist MAGA coalition that ardently supports President Donald Trump. He credited Trump for starting the MAGA movement.
“It is really important that we understand what it means that this president stitched together this very unlikely crew that includes traditional Republicans, libertarians, authoritarians, and white nationalists,” the Michigan Democrat said. “We have to have a bigger, better, different coalition.”
“I’m very focused on coalition right now, and that includes pillars of our Democratic coalition, like the building trades workers I was with in Toledo or in Nevada, and certainly Black voters who are so vital to the past, present and future of the party,” he said in the interview.
In the coming weeks, Buttigieg is set to visit North Carolina, where he’ll campaign for Democrats, as he did in Pennsylvania and Georgia. He will also travel to Oklahoma and Montana, two red states. In the latter, he is expected to promote “The Montana Plan,” a ballot initiative designed to prevent corporations from contributing money to political candidates or ballot issues in the state.
There are no confirmed dates for the trips yet.
Oklahoma and Montana both have their primaries in June, two weeks apart, and North Carolina held its primary at the start of March. The highest-profile race in the state was for an open Senate seat, which former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is seeking to flip. It remains unclear which Democratic candidates Buttigieg will be supporting in North Carolina’s political races.
Two other possible Democratic presidential candidates, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and former Vice President Kamala Harris, recently toured the nation to promote their respective memoirs. Book tours are often a common tool prospective candidates employ to test the waters in certain states.
Buttigieg has no confirmed memoir in the works, but he is gauging voters on how they feel about the Trump administration with his multistate stops.
As for whether he plans on running for president in two years, he isn’t sure yet.
THE DEMOCRATS WHO COULD RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2028
“I don’t know,” he answered when asked by public policy nonprofit group Bridge Michigan. Cultivating the imagination of the Democratic Party is “one of the things I’m working on every day,” he said.
In the 2020 Democratic primary, Buttigieg won the Iowa caucuses and came in second in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary. Serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at the time, he dropped out of the presidential race and subsequently endorsed Joe Biden. Buttigieg, dubbed “Mayor Pete,” then served in Biden’s Cabinet as the transportation secretary for four years.
