The more you talk to Chasten Buttigieg, the more you realize that he is very much like his husband, Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who ended his campaign for president on March 1. The 30-year-old junior high school teacher who left the classroom for the campaign trail is every bit as reserved and thoughtful. But you also see how Chasten is the warmer, looser and more outwardly emotional yin to Pete’s presidential yang.
Chasten walked into the conference room of a hotel in a town next door to Columbia, S.C., with an aide and his parents in tow. During our 33-minute conversation on the morning of the South Carolina primary, his eyes never strayed too long from theirs, for his parents were a grounding force for a young man who had been leading a surreal life since his husband announced his exploratory committee to run for president in January 2019. Chasten and Pete had been married for only seven months by then.
“I think back to that moment, because, I think early on in the campaign, I had mentioned off-the-cuff to a reporter that I laughed, and they took it as I was laughing at him. But I was laughing at the reality that my life had changed so dramatically,” said Chasten as he recounted his reaction when Pete came home and told him that he was going to make a run for president. “But I told him to go for it because I love him and I believed in him. ... He’s just focused on people, and he’s focused on results. And with him, it’s so real. I want other people to feel that, too.”
That’s what you would expect a political spouse to say. But when Chasten talked about his politician husband, it came from a genuine place as the emotions behind the words were visible on his face and in his eyes. Chasten continually tied what made him fall in love with Pete to the qualities that would make him a leader worthy of the White House.
“When I got to Pete, my life was kind of at a low point. I’d kind of given up on love and, unfortunately, allowed people to love me who didn’t deserve to love me. I was trying to figure out what to do and started grad school. And then I fall in love with this guy,” Chasten said, recounting the impact of Pete on his life. “I fell in love with Pete because he made me feel so important. And from the very beginning, I had never met someone who was so interested in me and my family and my story and why I studied the arts.”
“I had never felt like somebody cared so deeply about who Chasten really was,” he continued in response to a question about his thoughts on his husband’s reputation for being stiff and robotic. “I’ve opened up a little bit about my experience with having people break my heart ... and for someone like Pete to come along and not only chip away at that wall that I had built up between my heart and the rest of the world, I mean, he took a wrecking ball to it. And not only did he make me believe in love again, but he really helped me see my importance and my worth. And that’s not robotic. It’s deeply loving.”
“Wrecking ball”? Mayor Pete? Seriously? I couldn’t resist asking Chasten how that manifested itself. “I think he sensed something in me that I didn’t want to share my vulnerabilities. And it’s hard to put into words, but he made me feel safe, and he made me feel like it was okay to open up about those things and okay to be honest about all of the things that shaped me for better, for worse into the person that I was, the person who is sitting across the table from him.”
One of the things that shaped Chasten was coming out as gay to his family. He wrote them a letter, according to a profile in The Post last year. When I asked him what his letter said, he said, “I don’t know.”
“When you’re a teenager, the way you’re thinking about that issue is not like, ‘Well, my parents love me unconditionally, so surely they’re gonna be fine with it.’ It’s ‘society keeps telling me that I am a failure. I am a disappointment. I’m a disgrace. I’m going to break the hearts of my family, so I better get out before I break their heart. ... So I just ran,” Chasten told me. The months he spent bouncing around “sleeping on friends’ couches and kind of bouncing around and was pretty unstable,” he said, ended when his mom called. She told him to come home. As Chasten recounted this period, his eyes brimming with tears, I turned to see his mother wiping away tears of her own.
“I’m very lucky that I got to go home. I got to go back to a family that was there for me, who knew that I had a lot of uphill battles ahead of me. Not every kid gets that. And that’s why I’m out here on the trail doing the work every day,” Chasten said. “That’s why I visited over 100 LGBTQ centers and homeless service providers, in part because I want to make sure I’m giving back and speaking up for all of the kids who feel like nobody’s speaking up for them.”
Despite those visits, the Buttigiegs have had to contend with questions about whether Pete is “gay enough.” But Chasten sloughed off my query about that insane controversy and put the focus back on the campaign.
“I don’t get myself wrapped up in what people are saying about me or my husband on social media or on television, because I find so much purpose and good out of going out there and showing up for those kids, especially in the way I wish somebody was showing up for me,” he said. “People need to know that you’re going to actually show up for them. And a lot of that work for me isn’t showing up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m the husband of the gay candidate.’ It’s showing up and saying, ‘I represent my husband, Pete Buttigieg, and I want to hear from you what you need to see in a president, because I’m sure you have felt repeatedly like this country doesn’t believe in you, doesn’t stand for you. And even when somebody gets to the White House, they’re not going to do either of those things. So I’m here to tell you before we even get there that you will have an ally in the White House.’”
In those travels, the Buttigiegs have seen the impact of Pete’s historic campaign as the first LGBTQ American to make a high-profile run for a major party’s presidential nomination. With all the thank-yous and the whispered confidences of people seeking the ear of someone in power, I wondered how Chasten handled the weight of it all. He brought it back to Pete.
“Sometimes we’re in three or four states a day, and then people are putting that all on you. But for so long, I wish someone had come along and said, ‘Let me help you carry it.’ And then I met Pete. And that’s what Pete said: ‘I know it’s heavy. I know it’s hard. Give me some of that heavy stuff. Let me help you carry it,’ ” Chasten said. “And now that’s what this campaign is like. It’s going out there and looking people in the eye and saying, ‘I know it can be hard. And I know there’s a lot of heavy stuff, but that’s why we’re here, too, because we’re going to help you carry the heavy stuff.’ ”
The day after we spoke in South Carolina, Chasten was back in Indiana. Flush-faced and eyes wearing the emotion of the moment, he stood at the lectern to introduce his husband, who was announcing the end of his campaign. What Chasten had to say was all very familiar. Twenty-four hours earlier, he said many of the same words during our conversation as he allowed himself at my insistence to dream that his husband was president of the United States and he was the first gentleman. Ensuring that every child had access to arts education would have been a focus of a Buttigieg East Wing. But it is not meant to be. At least, not yet.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj. Subscribe to “Cape Up,” Jonathan Capehart’s weekly podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
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