Democrat Pete Buttigieg endorsed Joe Biden for US president on Monday, providing a major boost to the former vice president’s White House hopes just one day after the onetime Indiana mayor himself dropped out of the race.
“I’m delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president,” Buttigieg said shortly before Biden was to take the stage at a rally in Dallas on the eve of Super Tuesday when residents of Texas and 13 other states cast ballots for their choice for Democratic nominee.
“I’m looking for a president who will draw out what is best in each of us, and I’m encouraging everybody who was part of my campaign to join me because we have found that leader in vice president, soon-to-be-president, Joe Biden,” Buttigieg said, with Biden standing nearby.
“We have politics right now that makes it sound like being loudest is tantamount to being right. We need politics that’s about decency,” Buttigieg added.
“That’s what Joe Biden has been practising his entire life.”
The two centrists are former rivals in the Democratic nomination battle who are now united in their desire for a moderate candidate to beat leftist Bernie Sanders, a US senator from Vermont.