“When I first heard that he was really seriously considering a run,” says author Paul Mason Barnes of Pete Buttigieg, “I thought, wow, that’s fantastic! An openly gay mayor from South Bend, Indiana.” But his next thought was: “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
Barnes served on Pete Buttigieg’s ground-breaking presidential campaign and wrote a book on it, titled Paul for Pete: Politics. Theatre. Life. One Man’s Adventures (Or, How I Became A Septuagenarian Fanboy). His passion and that of many other volunteers swept Buttigieg into the national limelight.
Before joining Buttigieg’s campaign, Barnes told Out in the Bay's Eric Jansen, he had to reconsider his earlier assessment. “We elected a black president twice by overwhelming popular vote margins. We elected a female candidate [by] overwhelming margin popular vote, and then this failed real estate developer became our president,” Barnes reasoned. “So clearly to me, anything was possible in American politics.”
Barnes shares his adventure of trying to get Mayor Pete to the White House while an active, cross-country traveling theater director and with his husband suffering a stroke during the campaign. With critical midterm elections just weeks away, Barnes hopes to inspire others to get involved at the grassroots level by showing that individuals can make an impact.
Although not elected president, Buttigieg did make it to the White House. He now serves in President Biden’s Cabinet as Secretary of Transportation and is the first openly LGBTQ person to be confirmed to a Cabinet position.
"Paul for Pete" is also a memoir that delves into Barnes' long theater career, the trajectory of his life as an openly gay man — from before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York through the AIDS pandemic and into marriage equality — and his 47-year relationship with husband Jim Edmondson, a founding member of Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Barnes credits their partnership's longevity in part to one of their key rules: "We always say yes to each other's opportunities."
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Eric Jansen is Out in the Bay Queer Radio+Podcast's founding producer. This episode was edited and hosted by Christopher Beale.
