Listen Live

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The presidential campaign has taken former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg to California. 

Buttigieg spoke in Sacramento Friday evening and said the day a new president is sworn in next January, the U.S. will be facing a host of issues that weren’t even imaginable a few years ago. 

“An economy being reshaped by gig-work and technology in ways still barely understood,” he listed. “A global situation impacted by global health security threats and cybersecurity threats we barely knew.”

Buttigieg also courted disillusioned Republicans in his speech, saying there is a place for them if he wins the Democratic nomination. He’s also bee facing some controversial criticism from conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh over his marriage to a man.

Limbaugh said late last week “America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president.”

“I am in a faithful, loving, and committed marriage. I’m proud of my marriage and I’m proud of my husband,” Buttigieg told Fox News. “I’m not going to be lectured on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh or anyone who supports Donald J. Trump as the moral as well as the political leader of the United States.”

In the latest polling data shows the Buttigieg campaign might be in for a struggle as they continue to rattle through the primary states. In Nevada, Buttigieg is polling fourth at just 10-percent; way back of first place Bernie Sanders with 25-percent and sandwiching Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Tom Steyer.

Similar numbers are coming back in South Carolina and Texas.

(PHOTO: Alex Wong/Getty Images)