Buttigieg said he was "mindful and humbled by the fact that New Hampshire is New Hampshire, and New Hampshire is not the kind of place to let Iowa or anybody else tell you what to do.”

He touted his strong performance in Iowa, where after a series of reporting delays he appeared to have virtually tied with Senator Bernie Sanders, and asked for voters here to help him win on Tuesday.

Merrimack, N.H. — Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg spoke Thursday afternoon at the Merrimack American Legion to a small room packed with voters and an expanded trail of national media, returning to New Hampshire after a swing through New York to attend fund-raisers and appear on “The View.”


Buttigieg’s campaign has momentum after a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses. His support increased 8 percentage points since Monday to 19 percent in the Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University tracking poll of likely Democratic primary voters. That pushed him past former vice president Joe Biden into second place in Wednesday’s poll, behind Sanders at 25 percent.

At the event sponsored by Vote Vets, a progressive veterans group that has endorsed him, Buttigieg thanked the state of New Hampshire for its service members and spoke with a level of detail made possible by his own military service. Buttigieg, who promotes a message of bipartisan unity, said being a veteran is something that unites people who otherwise have nothing in common.

“And yet because of that [experience, we] learned how to work with and support and trust one another with our lives,” he said.

Buttigieg talked about the different issues faced by veterans from the 9/11 generation and from the Vietnam era and the importance of quality health care for all of them, warning “a lot of work” needs to happen on that front.


He said as president, he would make sure medical information flows seamlessly from the Department of Defense to the Veterans Administration, a big problem currently.

He also said he would work to stamp out white nationalism in the military, spare undocumented people who have served from being targeted for deportation, and end the ban on openly transgender individuals serving in the military.

On sexual assault, Buttigieg said there should be an official, legal process for dealing with it that takes cases outside the chain of command.

“So the bottom line here is that we know what we need to do," Buttigieg said. "There is an American consensus on what we ought to do. Washington just can’t quite make it happen.”

“We have a politics that is not responding to what people really expect and want and need. And this is our chance to change all of that. And we have to change it in the name of those for whom this is very, very personal. All politics is not just local, it is personal,” he said.

Buttigieg also said there should also be more support for military families, like suspending student loan repayment for military spouses who can’t work because they move around the country frequently.

Earlier Thursday, Buttigieg stopped by “The View”'s New York City studios where he rejected criticism from Biden that he was too inexperienced to risk being the Democratic nominee against President Trump.

“Every time that my party’s won the White House in the last 50 years ... it’s been with a candidate who was new in national politics and hadn’t run for president before and was opening the door to a new generation," Buttigieg said on the ABC TV talk show. “At a moment like this in an election we cannot afford to lose, do we want to take the risk of falling back on the familiar when that generally does not work for us in presidential elections?”


Biden, who finished a disappointing fourth in Iowa, saw his support drop to 12 percent in Wednesday’s poll from 18 percent on Monday. In a New Hampshire campaign appearance Wednesday, Biden sharply criticized Sanders and Buttigieg.

"I have great respect for Mayor Pete in his service to this nation, but I do believe it’s a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who has never held an office higher than a mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana. I do believe it’s a risk,” Biden said.

In addition to responding to Biden on “The View,” Buttigieg also took a dig at former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for not campaigning in several key early states. Buttigieg said states like Iowa and New Hampshire force candidates to “actually have human contact” with voters.

“That’s so important precisely so that you can’t just purchase the presidency by throwing money onto the airwaves,” he said, referring to Bloomberg’s heavy spending on TV ads in states beyond the first four contests.


“We started this thing with a team of four on the exploratory committee … people couldn’t say my name," Buttigieg said. "I’m not a millionaire, I didn’t have any personal money to put into this. I’m not a senator, so I didn’t have a big PAC going for me either.”

Buttigieg’s appearance on “The View” came after he appeared at three fund-raising events in the New York City area Wednesday and Thursday.

At a fund-raiser Wednesday night in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, Buttigieg touted his narrow lead in the Iowa caucus. With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Buttigieg leads Sanders by just 0.1 percent.

“There is just no question that Monday in Iowa represents an astonishing victory for our vision, for our candidacy and for this country,” he said at the fund-raiser, according to a pool report.

In the fourth quarter, Buttigieg raised $24.7 million in individual contributions, up from his third-quarter total of $19.2 million.





Laura Krantz can be reached at laura.krantz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @laurakrantz.