Former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve; former consultant for McKinsey & Company; former Rhodes scholar

Former two-term mayor of South Bend; did not run for re-election in 2019 and left office on Jan. 1, 2020

Mr. Buttigieg was the first candidate to push the idea of increasing the number of seats on the Supreme Court. And he has proven to be one of the most formidable fund-raisers in the race.

Pete Buttigieg has built his campaign around the idea of generational change. The youngest candidate in the presidential field, he says he would be a bridge to a new era of American politics.

Three questions about Pete Buttigieg

1. Where did Pete Buttigieg come from? Until launching his presidential campaign in January 2019, Mr. Buttigieg was a relatively obscure mayor of an Indiana city of just over 100,000 people. Educated at Harvard and then Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, he served as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve and worked as a McKinsey consultant. Mr. Buttigieg’s first entry into national politics came in early 2017, when he ran unsuccessfully for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

2. How would Mr. Buttigieg change the makeup of the Supreme Court? Mr. Buttigieg has proposed or endorsed a handful of options for altering how justices are seated. Changing the system, he says, could make each new court appointment less of a political death match between Republicans and Democrats. One plan Mr. Buttigieg has floated would establish a Supreme Court of 10 permanent justices, with five others rotating in who could be seated only by unanimous consent of the first 10. He’s also considered having appellate court judges serve rotating one-year terms on the court.