Pete Buttigieg said Thursday that he’s planning on staying in his job as Transportation secretary, which he called “the best job in the federal government.”
“I don’t have any plans to do any job besides the one I’ve got,” Buttigieg said in an interview with Punchbowl News on the two-year anniversary of his confirmation. He swatted aside questions about any plans to run for president in 2024 or a bid for an open Senate seat in Michigan.
Buttigieg, who rose from the mayor of South Bend, Ind., to make an unsuccessful bid for president in 2020, is a rising star in the Democratic Party and widely expected to eventually make a run for higher office.
He noted that the decision on how long he’ll head up the Transportation Department is ultimately “above his pay grade” and that he serves “at the pleasure of the president for the time being,” as it says on the certificate on his wall. “Every political appointee accepts that,” he said.
Still, he said, he has no current plans to leave.
“I love this job and I feel like we’re right in the middle of the action,” he said. “I’m not planning on going anywhere because we’re smack in the middle of historic work.”
He said his job leading DOT is “taking 110 percent of my attention and energy” and that he thinks it’s “the best job in the federal government — even if it’s pretty demanding some days.”
“It’s a privilege to be doing the work,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to be doing.”
