Pete Buttigieg was struggling to be taken seriously as a first-time candidate for office in September 2010.

So with the tea party taking off, the then-28-year-old unknown running for Indiana state treasurer showed up at a South Bend church for a Meet the Candidates Night hosted by two groups aligned with the populist, conservative, Barack Obama–bashing movement that would power the next decade of Republican politics.

“I have to admit, as a Democrat, many of my friends and supporters looked at me as if I was absolutely nuts when I suggested that I would be coming tonight to speak with a group that’s often identified as the tea party,” Buttigieg said as he stared down from the pulpit.

“There are some, especially in my party, who think that the tea party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party,” he continued. “But there are many others who believe that the tea party is motivated by real concerns about the direction of our government, and the responsiveness of our government to citizens, and above all the frustration with business as usual. That is what motivated me to run. And so while we may come from often very different perspectives, I believe we might find that we have a lot in common on that front.”

Buttigieg lost the 2010 treasurer’s race but won the first of two terms as South Bend’s mayor the following year. Now, from that small-town springboard, he’s a surprisingly strong Democratic candidate for president — polls show he’s emerged as a frontrunner in Iowa, the first caucus state — trying to establish himself as a label-defying moderate. A campaign that grabbed attention early on with big lefty ideas (abolishing the electoral college, expanding the Supreme Court) has lately embraced more centrist vibes (Medicare for all who want it). And Buttigieg’s recent judgment about the “failures of the old normal” has been interpreted, despite his protests, as a subtle rebuke of the Obama years and, by extension, Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president and Buttigieg’s chief competition for moderate Democratic primary voters.

As the race and message shift, Buttigieg critics and skeptics and those who work for his rivals are now parsing his 2010 tea party appearance, particularly the suggestion that “the tea party is motivated by real concerns.” The video, referenced in a New York Times story last month and in a BuzzFeed News piece last week, caught fire among Democratic activists Monday night on Twitter, prompting a response from the Buttigieg campaign.

Buttigieg’s comments at the 2010 forum were “nearly identical” to comments Obama made about the tea party around that time, when the then-president said there were “a lot” of people involved in the movement with “very real and sincere concerns” about government spending and reach, rapid response director Sean Savett tweeted.

“This clip has already been widely circulated and reported on,” Savett added in an email Tuesday. “When Pete ran for state treasurer in 2010, his opponent wouldn’t debate him, so he attended a 'Meet The Candidates' event because it was his only opportunity to share the stage with his opponent. As Pete makes clear in the footage, he 'comes from a very different perspective' and doesn't share anything close to the view of the tea party, before acknowledging the frustrations many people felt about government being run as business as usual.”