In a Lyft in Washington in late 2018, Tennessee state Sen. Jeff Yarbro was catching up with his old college friend, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, when the conversation shifted to 2020.

Pete Buttigieg, who had graduated from Harvard University several years after Yarbro, confirmed to Yarbro straightforwardly what the Democrat from Nashville had heard scuttle about: Buttigieg was serious about running for president of the United States.

"There is something a little surreal about having a friend say that," Yarbro said on Wednesday ahead of a Buttigieg campaign event in Nashville, where the Tennessee Senate minority leader would announce his endorsement of his old college friend.

While Yarbro and Buttigieg barely missed each other during their time at Harvard, as Buttigieg recalls it, the two future Democratic politicians met through their involvement in the university's Institute of Politics.

Buttigieg said he admired Yarbro, who had been a student leader.

"Then about a decade later, he was really one of the first in my generation of people I knew who actually stepped up to run," Buttigieg recalled of Yarbro, who in 2010 at age 33 took on a primary race against 83-year-old state Sen. Doug Henry, the longest-serving member of the Tennessee legislature.

Yarbro lost, but the race "set him up well for the future," Buttigieg said. "Not unlike certain elements of my own story."

Buttigieg, the mayor of a medium-sized Midwestern city in a crowded field of Democratic presidential hopefuls, also lost his first race in 2010 when he was vying to become Indiana state treasurer.

Both are Democrats in largely red states, Buttigieg noted.

"I think there is something genuine about him, and something that reminds us of the decency and integrity that we actually hope people who work in the Oval Office will have," Yarbro said.

"He is the only candidate that has mentioned the word 'rural' thus far. I think he's going to have a lot of appeal to voters who have felt like the Democratic Party has left them."

Buttigieg, Yarbro have kept in touch over two decades

Yabro and Buttigieg have kept in touch over the last two decades, talking a couple times a year and seeing each other at gatherings for elected officials and at friends' weddings.

Last year, Yarbro and his wife went to South Bend to attend Buttigieg's wedding to his husband. In a June 2018 New York Times write-up of the wedding, Yarbro can be spotted in a photo at the reception.

Yarbro said he will be involved in raising money and securing votes for him in Tennessee, where he believes Buttigieg will have appeal to a wide variety of Democrats.

"I'll do everything I can to help Pete Buttigieg become the next president of the United States, because I think the country needs him," Yarbro said, comparing the "current occupant of the Oval Office" to someone who "treats the people like they're the audience in a reality TV show."

"I deeply respect that Pete is someone who is in the trenches leading a city," Yarbro said. "He's someone who is in rooms with people who are hurt, mad, who are looking for answers and asking for help. This is not some theoretical exercise for him or about what makes good cable news."

Following a Nashville rally at Cannery Ballroom and a private fundraiser Wednesday evening, Buttigieg will speak Thursday morning at a fundraiser for the Davidson County Democratic Party.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.

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