Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has won the endorsement of one of the nation's largest LGBTQ membership organizations. Equality California and its Nevada partner organization have more than 900,000 members.
Buttigieg is the only openly gay candidate in the race, but he wasn't the only candidate in the running for the endorsement.
The groups also considered backing Elizabeth Warren or Tom Steyer. But the endorsement committee believed Buttigieg had the most in-depth plans for protecting LGBTQ youth in schools and ending the HIV epidemic in the next decade.
Meantime, Buttigieg is casting himself as the lone candidate who can “turn the page” on the politics of the past.
Campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, Buttigieg also sharpened his criticism of top rivals Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders with just four days until the state's kickoff caucuses.
Buttigieg told the crowd that this is “no time to get caught up in reliving arguments from before.”
Polls show the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, locked in a tight race for the lead in Iowa, where he has campaigned aggressively in the run-up to the Feb. 3 caucuses.
