Pete Buttigieg set to return to Iowa State

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Pete Buttigieg speaks at a town hall Nov. 4 in Spencer, Iowa.

Mallory Tope

Pete Buttigieg will host a town hall at 6:30 pm on Monday in the Memorial Union.

This will be the third time Buttigieg has visited Iowa State’s campus since he began his presidential campaign in early 2019. Buttigieg’s first visit to Iowa State in January saw just a handful of curious show up to see him speak — when he returned in October 2019 the crowd size like his poll numbers had dramatically increased — with hundreds attending his Oct. 16 town hall.

Mandy Moore will also join Buttigieg at this event.

Moore is a singer and actress. She voiced the Disney princess Rapunzel in the film “Tangled” and stars in the NBC series “This Is Us.”

Buttigieg’s visit to Ames comes a day before the next Democratic presidential debate. He is one of six candidates that qualified for the Democratic presidential debate set to take place in Des Moines, the last debate before caucus night.

Buttigieg will also host campaign stops in Des Moines, Winterset, Newton, Cedar Falls, Mason City, Algona, Emmetsburg, Arnolds Park, Orange City, Sioux City and Le Mars on his latest swing through Iowa. This tour comes just weeks from the Iowa caucuses set for Feb. 3.

In December, Buttigieg undertook a tour of Iowa counties that flipped from Barack Obama in previous presidential elections to Donald Trump in the 2016 race.

Buttigieg previously served as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, his tenure as mayor ended at the beginning of 2020. He has noted his Midwest upbringing and work as mayor in television ads, during presidential debates and stump speeches.

“As the mayor of an industrial city for the past eight years, I’ve seen the cost of this corporate recklessness written in abandoned factories and vacant homes,” Buttigieg said in a guest column in The Gazette newspaper. “I’ve watched what it does to a family — not just to its pocketbook, but its pride — when they don’t know how they’ll pay the bills at the end of the month.”

The latest “Iowa Poll” conducted by Selzer & Company for the Des Moines Register, CNN and Mediacom found Buttigieg in third place with the support of 16 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucusgoers.

Buttigieg, who led the poll when it was last conducted in November, is behind the new Iowa frontrunner Bernie Sanders who has 20 percent support and Elizabeth Warren who has 17 percent support.

Buttigieg is just ahead of Joe Biden who has 15 percent support. Biden struggles in Iowa despite retaining frontrunner status in most polls of likely Democratic primary voters nationally. The Iowa Poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percent.