Pete Buttigieg is preparing to officially announce his presidential campaign

Mr. Buttigieg had a few swirling weeks: the mayor traveled the country under a magnifying glass to try to take advantage of the momentum he received from a highly regarded CNN town hall at the beginning of the year. March. San Francisco, Chicago and New York. The rise in interest among Democrat heavyweights has followed a similar rise in polls, where Buttigieg has gone from less than 1% support to candidates like Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker.

"We've talked a lot about this problem in the context of 2020 for a month now," said Buttigieg. "Once again, if you want to talk about a period during which you will really learn how much your efforts will be taken seriously and how well you can organize and the resources you can muster, one month is not enough. Is not that long. "

Buttigieg announced the Exploratory Committee at a press conference in Washington, DC, in January. He told CNN in late March that even if "all indicators point to an official campaign," a launch is something you can only do once, and we will not do it until all the elements will not be available. in place."

Buttigieg will make an announcement on Sunday at Studebaker Building 84, a newly renovated multipurpose building that once housed Studebaker, an auto manufacturing company headquartered in South Bend, until it closed in 1963.

This was not always the case: Initially, the fledgling Buttigieg team was essentially planning to close parts of downtown South Bend and organize an outdoor rally in the heart of downtown, which was revived by the Mayor's mandate. The rain and the wind meant that they had to change plans, but Buttigieg said the change had a positive side.

"The location of the rain is perhaps a blessing in disguise, because there is such symbolic power in this building and you can see the past, the present, and the future," he said. he declares. "I'm talking so much about why we're not trying to go back and that it's not recovering once again the impossible." This building is kind of a living symbol of all of this."

The building has recently been reused. It now anchors the South Bend Renaissance neighborhood and houses a cluster of technology companies, including the South Bend Code School and an Amazon Web Services company, symbol – should say Buttigieg – of how his leadership as mayor has helped revitalize parts of the city.

A senior assistant says that he will focus on two key topics: the need for generational change in the country and the argument that he is an entirely different political figure at a time when the American people are looking for something something different in his policy.

Buttigieg will be presented Sunday by a series of mayors.

Although Buttigieg officially announced his announcement on Sunday, he officially removed the word "exploratory" from his committee on Friday at the Federal Election Commission.

The Buttigieg committee has been restricted for months. According to Buttigieg's help, the committee currently has 32 people and plans to recruit between 45 and 50 people by the end of the month.

Initially, thanks to its small staff, the mayor had spent very little of the $ 7 million that his team had gathered during the first quarter of fundraising in 2019. According to the assistant, the first quarter fundraising report Buttigieg will show that he has a burn rate of less than 10%, a figure well below that of other candidates, like Warren, whose campaign announced earlier this month that his burn rate was over 85%.

"Pete is a different type of candidate and we want to create a different type of campaign," said Mike Schmuhl, Campaign Manager at Buttigieg. "We do not want a top-down, consultant-driven operation, we want to look like a startup, and we want to build smart and stable."

Schmuhl said that, for the moment, the campaign has no investigators or consultants. Although he has not ruled it out in the future, Schmuhl said the campaign seemed "agile as we move forward".

The campaign has already opened a seat in South Bend, two small suites in the Jefferson Center building. The campaign also plans to open a small office in Chicago, where will live some helpers and, given the relatively small size of South Bend Airport, the candidate and campaign aides will work before the flights. Across the country.

Buttigieg's rise has also seen him accepted as a member of the senior echelons of Democratic donors, many of whom seek to donate to several candidates as the number of candidates increases.

Susie Tompkins Buell, one of these funders, also organized a fundraiser for Buttigieg and about 150 donors on Thursday in the Bay Area.

"He made a very strong impression, I think, with everyone, he is very authentic and that's what people want," she said. "It's something he has in common with the current president: what you see is what you get, otherwise they are completely opposed."

Mr Buttigieg will follow through on his announcement by a trip to New York Monday in Brooklyn for an inexpensive fundraiser, followed by a two-day trip to Iowa Tuesday and Wednesday.