Pete Buttigieg confirmed as transportation secretary in 86-13 Senate vote

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The Senate on Tuesday voted 86-13 to confirm former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as President Biden’s transportation secretary.

Buttigieg, 39, is the first openly gay Senate-confirmed cabinet member and the second with a cabinet-level job after acting intelligence director Richard Grenell, who held that office last year.

Most Republicans supported Buttigieg’s confirmation after he won 21-3 committee approval.

Buttigieg emerged from obscurity to win the delegate count in last year’s Iowa Democratic caucuses. But his win in the first-voting presidential primary contest was muddled by a catastrophic vote-count technology failure, inhibiting a traditional publicity, polling and fundraising bump.

The former mayor dropped out of the Democratic race in March and endorsed Biden as more moderate candidates coalesced around the former vice president against socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign was picking up steam at the time.

South Bend’s transit system is relatively small — carrying about 4,300 people per day on 66 buses, according to a 2019 report from the Indiana Department of Transportation — but Buttigieg faced only light Republican opposition.

The former mayor listened to an array of local transportation concerns at his confirmation hearing — at one point accepting Republican Sen. Roger Wicker’s invitation to tour Mississippi’s Gulf Coast to appreciate why Amtrak service should be restored.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) touted his own priorities in a Tuesday morning speech on the Senate floor.

Buttigieg “has demonstrated an impressive familiarity with our nation’s entire transportation challenges — challenges which are pronounced in states like my own, where projects like the Gateway tunnel are a top national priority,” Schumer said.

Buttigieg graduated from Harvard University in 2004 and formerly worked as a business consultant at McKinsey & Company. He will replace former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who resigned last month after former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.

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