Barack Obama? Yes, but also Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who emphasizes his parallels with Obama to bolster the case that he can win the Democratic presidential nomination, as a raft of polls show him rising, and as he builds out his ground game to compete in Iowa and New Hampshire.

With roughly 100 days before the New Hampshire primary, he was about 20 points behind the front-runner in national polls, but on the rise and preaching a gospel of hope.

DERRY, N.H. — He has an unusual last name. He is a Democrat who hails from the Midwest and openly discusses faith. When he became a presidential candidate, the first thing people said was that he lacked experience even as his election would mark a historic first.


It’s a message that resonates with Mary Rauh, who served as one of Obama’s cochairs in the 2008 New Hampshire primary. This year, she was one of the first to endorse Buttigieg.

“There really are similarities,” said Rauh last week. “They are both really bright and come with a core sense of values. What also strikes me is how they really excite young people, they have clear plans, and they aren’t going to scream at you, but do want to talk about the future.”

Three major national polls of Democratic voters released Sunday found Buttigieg in the top four, trailing former vice president Joe Biden and Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. However, Buttigieg led Biden in a poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers released on Friday.

The most recent CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, released last week, showed Buttigieg in fourth place in the Granite State and now down only by 11 percentage points to Sanders, who led the field.

Buttigieg is scheduled to return to New Hampshire on Friday to embark on a four-day bus tour of the state. During the trip, if anyone wants to suggest he reminds them of Obama, he’ll probably embrace the comparison.


Last week, the Buttigieg campaign sent out a fund-raising e-mail with the subject line “The parallels between 2007 and 2019.”

Larry Grisolano, an adviser to Obama then and to Buttigieg now, wrote that “Pete’s campaign this year is rekindling the same excitement I felt at this time in 2007.”

Pete Buttigieg greeted supporters after an event. Lane Turner/Globe Staff/Globe Staff

In an interview with the Globe last week, Buttigieg spoke about the resonance and said, “Some things are very different and some things aren’t.”

But he emphasized that “you need a sense of hope in order to participate in politics at all.”

In 2007, Obama would often end his town hall meetings with his slogan of “Yes we can” and a promise that if those in the crowd joined his campaign they could transform the world.

Last Thursday, Buttigieg finished a town hall meeting in Derry on a similar note.

“I also believe running for office is an act of hope. There is a reason why in newspapers they took hopeful and turned it into a noun and used it as a synonym for candidate, right? . . . I am a presidential hopeful. I think it captures that fact that running for office is an act of hope. And so is volunteering and so is voting,” said Buttigieg, standing on the stage at an old, small opera house with patriotic bunting. “I hope you spread that sense of hope.”


But not everyone is sold on the candidate or the Obama parallels.

“I can see why some people could say they are similar, but I’ve attended both Obama events in 2007 and his reelection, and have seen Pete, and Pete just doesn’t knock you over in the way that Obama did,” said Kristi St. Laurent, the Windham, N.H., Democratic chairwoman, who attended the Buttigieg town hall in Derry. She remains undecided in the 2020 contest.

The one thing that has allowed Buttigieg to even be in the conversation, well ahead of a governor and many of the senators in the contest, is another important parallel with Obama: the ability to raise money.

Buttigieg outraised everyone in the field in the second quarter and was runner-up in the third quarter, behind only Sanders.

With this money, Buttigieg has invested on the ground in early states. He has more campaign field offices in Iowa and New Hampshire than anyone else.

It is notable that he is ramping up his presence in New Hampshire at a time when Senator Kamala Harris of California is closing her campaign offices in the state and focusing only on Iowa.

Buttigieg, like Obama, may hope that performing well in those states will assuage concerns among black voters.

In 2007, many African-Americans weren’t sure if America was ready to elect a black president. In 2019, they aren’t sure if they are ready to vote for a candidate who, like Buttigieg, is openly gay.


In the interview, Buttigieg said that one difference from Obama’s run 12 years ago is the historical timing of their candidacies.

“We are at the dawn of a different era,” said Buttigieg. “The entire Obama presidency played in a bigger 40-year Ronald Reagan era that has come crashing to an end at the hands of Donald Trump. And what’s on our hands is a decision about what’s next.”

When Obama was seeking the White House, he famously told a Nevada newspaper that he wanted to be a “transformational president” in the way that he believed Reagan had been. Interestingly, Buttigieg said, Obama’s presidency ended up not being transformational.

“I think in many ways Barack Obama turned out to be the last Democratic president of the Reagan era. And the constraints, especially that he faced in the Senate, reflected that. I think what Donald Trump represents is just setting the house on fire,” said Buttigieg.

Obama was also running for an open seat, while Democrats in 2019 are very focused on which candidate has the best chance to defeat an incumbent Republican president.

Buttigieg explains his ability to get elected by noting that his candidacy fits a successful historical pattern.

“Every single time my party has won the White House in the last 50 years, it’s been somebody who has been relatively new to national politics, with a values-oriented message, not perceived as a creature in Washington, and represented a new generation,” he said.


Pollster David Paleologos, who runs the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said that while most Democratic presidential candidates make the pitch on how they can win, only Buttigieg and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey are trying to make the pitch about hope.

“Booker’s campaign also has an uplifting theme to it and he has, in fact, used the word hope,” said Paleologos. “He just hasn’t caught on like Mayor Pete has.”

James Pindell can be reached at james.pindell@globe.com.