CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA – Pete Buttigieg returned Tuesday to Iowa, the state that boosted him from longshot to crucial contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Buttigieg’s trip – where he headlined a town hall with veterans – is sure to fuel speculation that he’s seriously eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The former South Bend, Indiana mayor, 2020 White House contender, and four-year Transportation Secretary under former President Joe Biden, has remained a prominent figure in Democratic circles.
“It feels really good to be back in Iowa. Anyone can come to Iowa just before an election is coming up,” Buttigieg said at the town hall, which was his first public political appearance since the end of the Biden administration.
Pointing to his 2020 caucus victory, Buttigieg elicited loud cheers. And he said that: “I wanted to make sure I had a chance to talk with the people I got to know five or six years ago, and people I’m seeing for the very first time.”
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Buttigieg didn’t bring up 2028 in his comments, and wasn’t asked about a potential second White House run as he took questions from the audience at the town hall, which was hosted by VoteVets, a progressive political organization that works to lift veterans and military families. The group told Fox News that roughly 1,800 people packed the event.
Buttigieg told a Substack author in a live interview hours before the town hall that when it comes to 2028, he would consider “what I bring to the table.”
During his 24 hours in the Hawkeye State, Buttigieg also gathered with staffers from his 2020 campaign and was followed around by a videographer from his political group Win the Era.
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Asked by Fox News if the trip to Iowa was the beginning of a 2028 assessment period, Buttigieg said “right now, I’m not running for anything and part of what’s exciting and compelling about an opportunity like this is to be campaigning for values and for ideas rather than a specific electoral campaign. So that’s what I’m about.”
A handful of those in the crowd interviewed by Fox News said they supported Buttigieg in the 2020 caucuses and would be interested in backing him again if he runs in 2028.
“I’m here because I come from a long line of veterans. I have three family members who are currently working at the VA hospital in Iowa City. So, I’m here to show support,” said Faith Hunt of Cedar Rapids. “I loved Pete in 2020, and I’m excited to see that he’s campaigning and hope to see that he runs again.”
And Chris Bzdill of Cedar Rapids said, “I really liked to hear what he had to say…It’s a very refreshing change. It seems logical and straightforward.”
And he added, “I’m kind of hoping that this progresses more, and we’ll see where it goes.”
Buttigieg, pointing to those comments, said, “of course it means a lot to hear that people who supported me then continue to believe in what I have to say.”
The trip by Buttigieg to Iowa comes less than four months into President Donald Trump’s second tour of duty in the White House.
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And it comes as the Democratic Party’s favorable ratings in national polls have plummeted to all-time lows while an increasingly angry and energized party base is anxious to push back against Trump’s sweeping and controversial moves during his second administration.
Democrats are already fixated on next year’s midterm elections, when the party hopes to win back majorities in the House and possibly the Senate from the Republicans. And Democrats are also already looking ahead to the 2028 presidential campaign, and for potential contenders to start making early moves.
While Iowa’s caucuses for half a century kicked off both major political parties’ presidential nominating calendars, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) demoted the Hawkeye State on their 2024 schedule.
But Buttigieg’s visit, along with his announcement in March that he would pass on a 2026 run for a Democrat-controlled open Senate seat in battleground Michigan, his adopted home state, are seen as signals of his interest in a potential 2028 national run.
Buttigieg, who, unlike many other top Democrats, often appeared on the Fox News Channel during his four years in the Biden administration, has spent the opening months of the second Trump administration making TV appearances, but also joining highly visible podcasts.
“We’re trying out several different formats — town halls, Q&As with different people on his social media, going out to podcasts and shows both political and non-political, and more — to try to reach people where they are, both in-person and online,” Buttigieg adviser Chris Meagher told Fox News ahead of the event.
Buttigieg, during the town hall, noted that “there are all these sources of information that our friends who think differently than we do about politics are getting information from, that, frankly, are not subject to the editorial standards of a newspaper. And that makes it all the more important to get in there and present a different way of looking things.”
Buttigieg is a veteran, having served six years in the Navy Reserves as an intelligence officer. During his time in the service, Buttigieg deployed for six months to the war in Afghanistan.
“This was not your typical Democratic rally because of the audience we were able to build and the messenger we had. These were center-right military families and veterans who want to come home to the Democratic Party, VoteVets spokesman Matt Corridoni told Fox News.
Pointing to Iowa, a one-time battleground state that’s turned red over the past decade, Buttigieg acknowledged during the town hall that “Democrats do not have the best brand around here.”
And he told reporters that “I think it’s really important to be in communities like this, to be in red states, to be in rural areas. It’s so important for Democrats to have a vocabulary to be able to reach out, and you can’t fashion that vocabulary online or only talking to people who already agree with you.”
Buttigieg heavily criticized the actions of the second Trump administration in his comments during the town hall, but he also emphasized that Democrats aiming to escape the political wilderness must spotlight their own ideas.
“There’s this theory that we should just hang back and let them screw up. I disagree,” Buttigieg said.
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The trip by Buttigieg came as he’s faced incoming fire in recent days from Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over a surge in flight delays and cancellations at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, which is one of the three major airports that services the New York City metropolitan area.
Duffy blames his predecessor at the Department of Transportation and the Biden administration for what he claims was a failure to upgrade the busy airport’s air traffic control system.
And Trump, last week, also chimed in, claiming that during his tenure as transportation secretary Buttigieg “didn’t have a clue. And this guy is actually a contender for president?” Trump added. “I don’t think he’s going to do too well.”
The president’s jabs came a few days after Buttigieg, pointing to Trump’s underwater approval ratings in national polling, said in a social media post that “Donald Trump is the most unpopular 100-day-mark president in modern American history.”
The Trump administration argues that Buttigieg oversaw a rocky transition of the Newark airport’s airspace to the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon) last July.
And Duffy, who earlier this week unveiled a major plan to overhaul the nation’s aging air traffic control system, claims the Biden administration is to blame for the recent problems, including air traffic control equipment outages.
“Maybe when you work from home, or maybe when you work from Michigan as a secretary, maybe you’re not focused on the real issues that are taking place throughout the airspace,” Duffy said, as he took aim at Buttigieg, who lives in Michigan.
Buttigieg, responding, told reporters that “when you’re the secretary of transportation, you have a tough job and your responsibility is to fix tough problems. You don’t have time to indulge in trying to point fingers or blame other people.”
“What I can tell you is we inherited a shrinking air traffic control workforce. We turned it into a growing air traffic control workforce,” he added. “My successor is, of course, not asking for my advice, but my advice would be to making sure that it grows and actually delivering the technological change that’s needed.”
And he added that “we launched the contract to modernize the communications backbone of the FAA knowing that it wasn’t something that could be done in a year or two years. If he can achieve an acceleration of that, I will be the first one to be cheering for that. But that takes focus, it takes discipline, it takes integrity and, frankly, there’s no time for politics on a mission-critical job like that.”
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