South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPete ButtigiegScaled-back Pride Month poses challenges for fundraising, outreach Biden hopes to pick VP by Aug. 1 It’s as if a Trump operative infiltrated the Democratic primary process MORE said in an interview published Monday that he’s unsure\u00a0why his as-yet unannounced campaign for the presidency is “doing so well.”<\/p>\n
\u201cCandidly, I don\u2019t even know all the reasons why this is going so well,\u201d he told New York Magazine.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think everything about this is as improbable as it is well aligned. There\u2019s that line about me being a laboratory concoction of what a politician might be,” he added. “I get where that comes from, but then again, in what laboratory would you have cooked up as your entry in a presidential contest \u2018mid-size-city midwestern mayor who\u2019s not even 40 yet,\u2019 you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Buttigieg, who earlier this year launched an exploratory committee for president, is expected to formally launch his campaign Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He raised more than $7 million in the first quarter of 2019 and in recent weeks Buttigieg has placed third in multiple polls of Democratic voters in Iowa. He also\u00a0came in third in a recent poll of Democratic voters in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Buttigieg also told New York Magazine that there is “a kind of whiplash to” the success.<\/p>\n
“But it\u2019s a good thing. The speedup of it, the trajectory of it, has definitely been more dramatic than we had expected. But we also prepared by putting together a good team, knowing that, sooner or later, if our theory of the case was right, we were going to grow,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We didn\u2019t know that we\u2019d explode onto the scene this early in the year, and that creates the challenge of making sure that we can sustain that energy. But I think the way you outlive the flavor-of-the-month period is through substance. We\u2019re gonna have a substantive process,”\u00a0Buttigieg added.<\/p>\n