HE is a longshot candidate, but Democratic mayor and military veteran Pete Buttigieg announced Wednesday that he is entering the 2020 U.S. presidential fray, aiming to become America’s youngest and first openly gay commander-in-chief.

Buttigieg said he had formed a presidential exploratory committee, a key opening step to formally launching what would be a longshot campaign to catapult him from local politics onto the national stage.

Little known outside of South Bend, Indiana, where he is the two-term mayor, Buttigieg even includes a guide to pronouncing his name on his Twitter account — it’s “BOOT-edge-edge.”

Should he win the Democratic nomination, the 37-year-old wunderkind, a U.S. Navy reservist who took leave from his mayoral duties to serve in Afghanistan, he would be the first openly gay presidential nominee. He would also be the youngest person ever to become president if he wins the general election.

The Rhodes Scholar, who married his husband, Chasten Glezman, a teacher, last year, announced his intentions while emphasizing his millennial pedigree and track record in improving the economy in his “Rust Belt” city.

Areas of the Midwest that have struggled for years amid a decline in manufacturing jobs were vital to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory.

“I am obviously not stepping onto this stage as the most famous person in this conversation,” Buttigieg told reporters at a news conference.

“But, I belong to a party whose characteristic has always been to look for fresh voices, new leadership, and big ideas. And, I think that’s what 2020 is going to be about.”

The young mayor faces substantial odds from a growing list of charismatic Democrats seeking to carry their party’s torch into 2020, including three female U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand — and Hispanic-American former Obama Cabinet member Julian Castro.

In a campaign-style video posted online, Buttigieg portrayed himself as a can-do reformer who revived his mid-sized city after decades of population flight and economic decline brought on by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

He makes no mention of Trump, instead taking aim at what he called the “show” in Washington: “The corruption, the fighting, the lying, the crisis. It’s got to end.”

“Right now our country needs a fresh start,” he said in the clip. “There’s no such thing as again in the real world. We can’t look for greatness in the past.”

And he highlights his credibility as being part of a new forward-focused generation facing immense challenges.

“My generation is the generation that experienced school shootings beginning when I was in high school, the generation that fought in the post-9/11 wars, the first generation to have to deal with the reality of climate change, and the first generation not to be better off than our parents materially — if nothing changes,” Buttigieg said.

“Only a forward focus — untethered from the politics of the past and anchored by our shared values — can change our national politics and our nation′s future.”

Buttigieg enters what is expected to be a crowded Democratic field of candidates vying for the right to challenge Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, in 2020.

The exploratory committee the mayor has just formed will start raising money and hiring staff to compete for the Democratic nomination.

He will face a tough task raising funds and building a coalition of support in a race that will feature many candidates with greater name recognition and bigger donor networks.

The Democratic field of contenders is expected to broaden in the coming months to likely include former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Cory Booker, former congressman Beto O’Rourke, and Senator Bernie Sanders, the runner-up for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

Speaking Wednesday to reporters in Washington, where he was attending a national mayors conference, Buttigieg acknowledged the odds but touted his unique candidacy.

“When it comes to experience right now, nothing could be more relevant than leading one of America’s turnaround cities,” he said.

As mayor of South Bend, a blue-collar town that is home to the University of Notre Dame, Buttigieg made redevelopment a top priority and was named mayor of the year in 2013 by the website GovFresh.com.

Republicans dismissed Buttigieg’s candidacy as a waste of time and said he should focus on South Bend’s problems.

“His bid isn’t just bad news for residents, it’s more proof that Democrats are about to endure the most crowded, divisive, and contentious primary in history,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens.

“Longest of longshots, but this 37-year-old gay, Afghanistan War veteran has a remarkable story,” David Axelrod, who was a senior aide to former President Barack Obama, said on Twitter.

Buttigieg was born and raised in South Bend, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a degree in history from Harvard University.

He has been mentioned as a potential presidential hopeful for years and was in the early primary state of Iowa last year, testing out a campaign message and attempting to build name recognition.

In June 2016, The New York Times ran a profile of Buttigieg titled, “The first gay president?”

Buttigieg began building a national profile in 2017 with an unsuccessful run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Former President Obama mentioned him in an interview shortly before leaving the White House as a young Democrat with a bright future.

Buttigieg was elected mayor in 2012 at the age of 29. He served a seven-month Naval Reserve tour in Afghanistan while mayor.

Buttigieg made headlines in 2015 after coming out as the first gay mayor in the mid-sized U.S. city. He chose to come out as gay in a column for the local newspaper.

Buttigieg kept his love life private before that, but said he was inspired to go public with his sexuality in order to bring attention to the issues facing LGBT people in his home state.

“It’s clear to me that at a moment like this, being more open about it could do some good,” Buttigieg wrote in the South Bend Tribune.

“For a local student struggling with her sexuality, it might be helpful for an openly gay mayor to send the message that her community will always have a place for her.

“And for a conservative resident from a different generation, whose unease with social change is partly rooted in the impression that he doesn’t know anyone gay, perhaps a familiar face can be a reminder that we’re all in this together as a community,” he added.

Indiana is not exactly known as a gay-friendly state, but Buttigieg said he’s witnessed a whole lot of change in attitudes towards the LGBT community, from the time he was going to high school in South Bend to today.

“It took me years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am,” Buttigieg wrote.

“That’s far less likely to be the case now, as more students come to feel that their families and community will support and care for them no matter what.”

Buttigieg said another reason he wanted to come out was an expected Supreme Court decision, which legalized gay marriage across the nation in 2015.

“Like most people, I would like to get married one day and eventually raise a family. I hope that when my children are old enough to understand politics, they will be puzzled that someone like me revealing he is gay was ever considered to be newsworthy,” he wrote at that time.

Buttigieg, who is releasing in February a book about his life and his tenure leading South Bend, got married in June 2018.

Speaking in personal terms about his marriage Wednesday, he said: “The most important thing in my life — my marriage to Chasten — is something that exists by the grace of a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“So I’m somebody who understands — whether it’s through that or whether it’s through the fact that I was sent to war on the orders of the president,” Buttigieg told reporters. “I understand politics not in terms of who’s up and who’s down or some of the other things that command the most attention on the news but in terms of everyday impacts on our lives.”(SD-Agencies)