Pete Buttigieg's pick for California state director has close ties to organized labor in the state. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images 2020 Elections Buttigieg campaign hires California state director

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign has hired Cecilia Cabello, a former operative for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and state director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, to run its operation in California.

Cabello will serve as the campaign's California state director, the Buttigieg campaign confirmed.


The campaign's retention of a state director in California is the latest sign that Buttigieg and his team have been looking to make an early and serious investment in building infrastructure in the Super Tuesday state, where most campaigns build out an operation later on. But from the earliest days of Buttigieg's presidential campaign, the mayor has put more attention into the state than most of his competitors in the primary field, traveling to California regularly for both low and high-dollar fundraisers in the state.

Only a few other campaigns have announced state directors at this point in the 2020 cycle. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, all among the top tier of Democratic candidates, have built out teams in the state, while former Vice President Joe Biden, the top-polling 2020 Democrat, has at least five staffers on the ground there.

Cabello gives Buttigieg an on-the-ground presence with close ties to organized labor in California, having served as the director of government relations for the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, a role in which she was responsible for the union's political activity in Los Angeles County.

Cabello was tapped as Clinton's California state director during the 2016 presidential election and was previously Clinton's California deputy political director for the 2016 Democratic primary. More recently, Cabello has served as vice president of the Board of Public Works in Los Angeles and was also chief of staff to Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has endorsed Harris but has spoken positively of Buttigieg, saying he “tends to be many people’s second choice — if he’s not already a first." Some of Buttigieg's earliest backers in the presidential race hail from California, including West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, a longtime ally, and California-based Democratic megadonor Susie Buell Tompkins, who has helped fundraise for Buttigieg in the state.