On the cover of New York Magazine’s April 15–28, 2019, issue, Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi talks to Pete Buttigieg — mayor of South Bend, Indiana (population 102,245), for the past eight years and a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary (population 18 and expanding) — who is in the midst of what mainstream media likes to call “a moment.” Of his improbable spike in popularity, Buttigieg tells Nuzzi: “Candidly, I don’t even know all the reasons why this is going so well.”
“There is so much interest in him right now, every public outing was like walking around with a celebrity,” Nuzzi says of reporting the story. “While I interviewed him in Concord, photographers walked along with us, backward, and one of them almost fell and hit a brick wall.” In some ways, Nuzzi says, it was more interesting speaking with him on the phone while he was at home, with his dogs barking in the background. “The slight distance he had from the mayhem that’s accumulated around him seemed to give him more perspective, and he was unusually insightful about this predicament he finds himself in.”