Pete Buttigieg has emerged successful in the Iowa caucus, the first vote by the Democratic Party for its Presidential candidate.
It has been announced that Buttigieg received 26.2% of the share of votes with 13 delegates, while Bernie Sanders got 26.1% with 12 delegates. This is the first in a series of state-by-state votes, known as primaries and caucuses.
38-year old Buttigieg attended Oxford University from 2004 to 2007 as a Rhodes scholar, receiving a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.
He was a member of Pembroke College. While at Oxford, he was editor of the Oxford International Review and co-founded the Democrat Renaissance Project.
In the American Rhodes Scholars-Elect document from May 2005, Buttigieg expressed his career aspirations as “public service, academia, law.”
He said was eager to begin his studies at Oxford, though “as a Mid-westerner”, he was “concerned about adjusting to the warmer English climate.”
Katharine Wilkinson, author and environmentalist, told The New Yorker last year that Buttigieg was an impressive debater, and “curated this great collection of whiskey from around the world”.
Jeremy Farris, his old flatmate, told The New Yorker that he taught himself Norwegian through reading a book on the toilet while in Oxford. In the days before his exams, he “boarded a cargo ship – shopping goods across the ocean – to isolate himself before the multiple days of tests.”
The next hurdle for Buttigieg is the New Hampshire primary, about which he states: “by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.” His main contenders are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
With the Iowa caucus, Buttigieg is the first openly LGBT+ candidate to earn presidential primary delegates in a major party’s nomination process. While at his caucus watch party, he called his husband, Chasten, the “future first gentleman of the United States.”
