Pete Buttigieg often asks people at his rallies to picture the day “when the sun comes up and Donald Trump’s not the president.”

It’s how Buttigieg explains that he represents a new direction for the country. At 38, he is not only the youngest remaining candidate in the race, he would also be the nation’s first openly gay president.

But representing a new direction doesn’t necessarily mean the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., is charting a more progressive course. In some ways, he’s advocating policies that are more conservative than what is in place now in California.

Buttigieg is trying to squeeze into a tight political window in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination — not as far left as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and yet not quite as far in the other direction as former Vice President Joe Biden.

Here’s what would be in store for California under a Buttigieg presidency if he got everything on his wish list:

Health care: Californians could keep their private health insurance if Buttigieg were elected.

He supports Medicare for All, but more as an idea than an actual policy goal. For now, he backs “Medicare for All Who Want It.” It would automatically enroll uninsured people in the government-administered health care program, while allowing people who have private insurance to buy into the plan if they wished. It is essentially what Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar call a “public option,” but with different branding.

The plan allows Buttigieg to dodge an attack President Trump previewed during his State of the Union address. Medicare for All, Trump said, would be “a socialist takeover of our health care system, wiping out the private health insurance plans” of 180 million Americans.

“These public option plans are trying to tap into the enthusiasm for Medicare for All and the idea that you could join Medicare and save money — but avoid that political land mine of taking away people’s insurance,” said Larry Levitt, who studies the candidates’ health plans as executive vice president for health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in San Francisco.

The foundation’s polling shows more Democrats and left-leaning independent voters support making incremental changes to the Affordable Care Act than replacing it with a Medicare for All plan.

Buttigieg would cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare. And he would increase Affordable Care Act subsidies for middle-income Americans.

Finances, taxes: California’s wealthiest residents and corporations would pay more under a Buttigieg administration, but not as much as they would if Warren or Sanders were president.

Like most Democratic candidates, Buttigieg wants to roll back the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017, which would mean pushing the corporate tax rate back to 35% from its current 21%.

While Warren wants a 2% annual tax on people with more than $50 million in wealth and an additional 1% tax on those with more than $1 billion, Buttigieg would tax the rich in a different way. He would raise capital gains rates for the top 1% of income earners and apply Social Security taxes to the top 2% of earners. He would also institute a 0.1% financial transactions tax.

Environment: Again, Buttigieg is setting more modest goals than what some of his competitors suggest and what California has put in place or set in motion.

He proposes “a realistic plan to become a net-zero emissions society no later than 2050.” In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law mandating that California rely on zero-emission energy sources for its electricity by 2045.

How we cover the candidates The Chronicle is examining how California would look if the major Democratic presidential candidates were elected and could implement their top policy priorities. Candidates’ positions are taken from their websites, their campaign comments, and in some cases legislation they have sponsored in office. Today’s installment is on former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Here are the other installments in this series: Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren. All of The Chronicle’s 2020 campaign coverage is found at sfchronicle.com/politics.

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Buttigieg is one of two remaining top Democratic candidates — the other is Andrew Yang — who back a carbon tax, in which the government charges a fixed amount for every ton of carbon dioxide a company releases into the atmosphere. There would be no limit to what a company could emit, but there would be a financial incentive to cut pollution. Buttigieg would distribute the money raised to low- and middle-income Americans.

Instead of a carbon tax, California uses a cap-and-trade system, which sets annual limits on how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases industries can emit. Companies can either buy credits for every ton of gas they produce or cut their emissions.

Buttigieg would spend $1.5 trillion to combat climate change, which is close to what Warren and Biden propose but a lot less than the $16 trillion that Sanders wants from Washington. Buttigieg’s plan includes $250 billion for a clean energy bank that would fund local green projects in low-income communities.

Education: Buttigieg has a different philosophy from Warren and Sanders when it comes to offering free public college tuition: He thinks there should be income limits for those who would benefit.

Families that earn up to $100,000 a year would pay no public college tuition under a Buttigieg administration. Families earning $100,000 to $150,000 would pay a reduced tuition on a sliding scale.

Many California students already pay no tuition. University of California undergraduates whose families earn $80,000 or less annually can attend school tuition-free; one-third of undergraduates qualify. In the California State University system, the threshold is $70,000; 63% of students qualify. California already offers free tuition for the first two years of community college for first-time students who attend full time.

Instead of canceling student debt, as Warren and Sanders propose, Buttigieg wants to increase Pell Grants to low-income students so they can spend it on food, housing and books to help them stay in school. A September survey of 15,000 students by the California Student Aid Commission found that two-thirds said they didn’t have a stable source of food and housing.

Immigration: Buttigieg said that in his first 100 days in office, he would propose legislation offering a path to citizenship for undocumented residents.

He would also extend temporary protection for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and are temporarily protected from being deported. California is home to 223,000 of them. He would also expand their ability to receive Pell Grants for education.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli