Pete Buttigieg claims that as the mayor of South Bend Indiana, he has more executive experience in government than President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.
When asked about his lack of experience in Washington, Buttigieg said his time as mayor of a mid-western city gave him all the executive background he needed to be president.
“I’ve got more executive experience than the president or the vice president of the United States in government,” he said in an interview posted Sunday with WCAX TV in New Hampshire.
Trump was the head of a multi-billion real estate company before he ran for president and Pence served 12 years in the United States Congress for his district in Indiana and four years as Governor of Indiana.
Buttigieg is currently spending most of his time in his second term for mayor running for President of the United States.
“I view it this way,” he said. “I have the executive experience of guiding a city and knowing that as a mayor, you are close to the ground, you are working with constituents, you are also responsible for everything from incident management to economic development.”
Buttigieg has been criticized by black residents for his failure to enact sufficient police reforms in his community.
The South Bend mayor also boasted he had more military experience than recent presidents.
“I’ve got more military experience than anybody to walk into that office since George H. Bush,” he said, referring to his time serving in the naval reserve.
The mayor served six years as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves and was deployed to Afghanistan for six months, but does not appear to have experienced combat.
Buttigieg, who is currently polling in single digits in most Democrat presidential primary polls, argued Democrats were ready for a “different” candidate who was not from Washington, D.C.
“I think there’s a real appetite for a different kind of candidate who can speak to the values that have held us together as Democrats for some time, but with a different background in a different vocabulary,” he said.