DETROIT – Would people in Michigan support a candidate for President who is not only openly gay, but married to another man?
We may well get an answer – from Democrats, anyway – in less than three months. Presidential nomination battles are a little like Japanese sumo wrestling contests: The ceremonies leading up to the event last far longer than the match itself.
That’s what we’ve been seeing with the Democrats, who have been engaging in a seemingly endless series of televised pre-primary debates since June. Some candidates get out; others get in, and the show rolls on, watched by a devoted core of fans.
“I will kind of miss (U.S. Sen.) Kamala Harris,” a 78-year-old retired Detroit-area teacher named Karen told me last week.
“I wasn’t for her, but I feel like she was one of the family,” said the teacher, who didn’t want her last name used.
She had, however, no reservations about saying who she did support. “I’m all in for Mayor Pete,” she said.
“He’s the smartest of them all, he inspires me, and we need something and someone completely new.”
It seems fair to say that most people in the nation are not glued to every Democratic debate. What polls have been taken in Michigan show that Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, registers barely a blip in the state compared to former Vice President Joe Biden.
However – does that mean anything? Four years ago, however, it was widely assumed the former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would be the eventual GOP nominee.
Twelve years ago, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes when someone suggested that a black freshman senator with an African name and a Muslim father could seriously challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination.
And until about 10 p.m., on Nov. 8, 2016, few took seriously the idea that a frequently divorced, grandstanding New York TV personality could be elected president of the United States.
Pete Buttigieg doesn’t just have the support of one retired teacher. In Iowa, which holds the first-in-the-nation caucuses Feb. 3, he has surged into a significant lead. He’s in a statistical tie for first in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary on Feb. 11.
He’s also been one of the top fundraisers, amassing $44 million in contributions, most of them small, just between April and October.
All this is fairly amazing, given that a year ago, almost nobody outside of South Bend (pop. 101,166) had ever heard of him.
But millions have now. As I was saying, once the primary and caucus voting starts Feb. 3, things will happen with considerable speed. Four small states vote in February. Then, a month after Iowa, comes Super Tuesday, the biggest primary event of all.
Fourteen states, including California, which has far more delegates than anywhere else, choose then. The next week, March 10, Michigan and five other states vote.
By then, many of today’s candidates are bound to be out of the race; if they don’t score big early, their financial donors stop giving.
After Ohio, Illinois, Florida and Arizona go to the polls on St. Patrick’s Day a week later, the vast majority of the delegates will have been chosen, though some states wait till the first week in June.
There is a chance, of course, that the race could go all the way to the convention. Any number of scenarios could become reality. Biden, despite his age (he’d be 78 when inaugurated) and his tendency to misspeak, still could be seen as the safest bet.
Michael Bloomberg, who is almost a year older than Biden, might suddenly captivate voters as a “can-do” candidate who has proven he can get things done. But he might also split the moderate vote, weakening both Biden and Buttigieg and helping Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
But back to Buttigieg (some of his supporters wear T-shirts saying simply Boot Edge Edge, the way his Maltese last name is pronounced.) Could he possibly win the nomination and election?
If he doesn’t, it could have little to do with his being gay. America has never elected a president so young. The youngest man previously elected, John F. Kennedy, was nearly five years older when he took office than “Mayor Pete” would be.
There are also those who are dubious about anyone making the jump from mayor of a town barely one-third the size of Toledo to President of the United States. Buttigieg also has few connections in the black community, and has had to work to overcome hard feelings stemming from his firing a black police chief.
However, being gay may not be a major handicap – especially in Michigan. Polls, including one from Quinnipiac University, have shown Democratic voters would be more inclined to support a gay candidate than one over 70. Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, Warren and President Trump are, indeed, all older than that.
Michigan voters have, in fact, already voted statewide for an openly gay candidate – Dana Nessel, the state’s attorney general, who is married to another woman. Pete Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten Buttigieg, is a Traverse City native who is not shy about expressing his love of his home state, and is something of a social media star.
We will know in a matter of weeks how all this will play out. But if Mayor Pete doesn’t win, he and his supporters can at least console themselves with this thought: He doesn’t have to be in a hurry.
He won’t be as old as Bernie Sanders is now until the presidential campaign of … 2060.
