Biden Selects Pete Buttigieg to Lead Transportation Department

WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden has selected former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, his former Democratic primary rival, to lead the Transportation Department, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Buttigieg dropped out of the race in March and endorsed Mr. Biden along with other moderate Democrats. Leading the Transportation Department, he is expected to play a prominent role in the incoming Biden administration’s push to rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges.

Mr. Buttigieg, a 38-year-old openly gay military veteran who served in Afghanistan, emerged as a surprising next-generation contender for the Democratic presidential nomination against Mr. Biden and notched a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses. But that win was overshadowed by technical glitches and reporting delays in the caucuses and he faded in the contests that followed.

Mr. Buttigieg served as a two-term mayor of South Bend from 2012 to 2020, making urban development and economic revitalization cornerstones of his administration. He officially launched his presidential campaign at a former Studebaker plant in his hometown that was transformed into a technology park during his tenure.

Mr. Buttigieg has spent the last several months campaigning for Mr. Biden and more recently was under consideration for several roles in the Biden administration. Mr. Buttigieg, who represented a city of about 100,000 people, beat out several others with experience dealing with much larger transportation systems, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Sarah Feinberg, the acting president of New York City’s transit system, the people said.

Mr. Biden’s transition team declined to comment.

Mr. Biden campaigned on a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, much of it related to transportation. Among the campaign’s boldest proposals was a call for “high-quality, zero-emissions” mass transit for every U.S. city with 100,000 or more residents. But it isn’t clear how the Biden administration would persuade Congress to fund such an effort, especially given current resistance to financial relief packages for mass-transit systems as they struggle with a collapse in ridership because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Buttigieg would take over a department whose most critical functions are setting transportation regulations and distributing vast sums of money, mostly to states to fund their respective highway, road and transit systems. The most critical pool of funds at the DOT’s disposal—the $43 billion federal Highway Trust Fund—is in need of major reform. The fund is supported primarily by federal taxes on gasoline and diesel, but the gas tax hasn’t been increased since 1993, leading to increasingly large deficits in the fund that Congress has plugged with money from other sources.

If confirmed, Mr. Buttigieg would be the second openly gay cabinet secretary. President Trump named Richard Grenell to be acting director of National Intelligence in his cabinet earlier this year.

The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, said the nomination would be “a reminder to LGBTQ people everywhere that any opportunity is possible.”

Mr. Buttigieg, who campaigned as a centrist willing to work across the aisle, helped the former vice president to consolidate support and ultimately win the party’s nomination. Mr. Buttigieg went on to serve as a member of Mr. Biden’s presidential transition.

During the campaign, Mr. Buttigieg proved to be a prodigious fundraiser. But he struggled to assemble a diverse coalition of voters beyond the white, well-educated ones who were most strongly drawn to him.

More on Joe Biden’s Transition

—Tim Puko and Emily Glazer contributed to this article.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com. and Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com

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Appeared in the December 16, 2020, print edition as ‘Buttigieg Is Tapped to Lead Transportation.’