Chasten Buttigieg

The potential ‘first gentleman’

Chasten Buttigieg has lost 20 pounds since it became possible he’d become the “first gentleman” in the White House, said Ellen McCarthy in The Washington Post. Despite his initial nervousness at becoming a public figure, the former drama teacher has grown into a campaign weapon for his husband, Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old South Bend, Ind., mayor surging in Democratic presidential primary polls. Chasten has more than 300,000 Twitter followers, and welcomes the chance to talk to other gay people. “For the first time in many people’s lives,” Chasten, 29, says, “they see someone on a national scale that makes them say, ‘Oh, that’s me.’” When he was growing up in Traverse City, Mich., his older brothers would chop wood with their dad while “I would be inside reading Harry Potter or singing Celine Dion at the top of my lungs while my mom and I were dusting cabinets.” When he came out to his family after high school graduation, his mother asked if he was “sick,” and one brother muttered, “No brother of mine.…” So Chasten left home, sleeping in friends’ apartments or in his car outside his community college. His parents eventually came around, and walked him down the aisle 10 months ago when he married Pete, whom he’d met on a dating app. Before their first date—a pub dinner and a minor-league ballgame—Chasten drove to Pete’s house, and the two said “Howdy” simultaneously. “My heart fluttered,” Chasten says. ■

May 10, 2019 THE WEEK