Los Angeles Times

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the hottest thing in politics. Can it last?

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Pete Buttigieg was home recently, back in the Indiana city where he was born and serves as mayor. He was at the library on Main Street, at a book signing for his autobiography, and everything seemed familiar, the way it's always been.

Only not.

"People looked at me like I was some kind of celebrity," he said, "and it was in South Bend, and I was thinking, 'You guys know me. We've been in this very same room and you've been yelling at me about neighborhood stuff.' It was like I was a different person."

That's what it is like to be the breakout star of the 2020 presidential campaign and, for the moment, the hottest thing in American politics.

The Democratic upstart with the inscrutable surname (pronounced BUDDHA-judge) and platinum resume - Rhodes scholar, business consulting background, Afghanistan War vet - has raised an impressive $7 million, begun climbing in

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