Costner Helps Buttigieg Attract Big Iowa Crowds: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- The star power of Kevin Costner helped attract big crowds for Pete Buttigieg in Iowa on Sunday, when the Oscar winner endorsed the 2020 hopeful.

“I see Pete as a man of his moment,” Costner said of the South Bend, Indiana, mayor, during an event at the Indianola High School. “Moral courage speaks with a certain clarity.”

Taking the stage, Buttigieg thanked Costner, the star of 1989’s “Field of Dreams,” for “making Iowa as heavenly as it can be on this December day.”

Buttigieg reflected that in the past year he’s gone from nobody being able to pronounce his name -- which changed, he said, thanks to President Donald Trump -- to having some in Iowa start adding “front-runner” to it.

Buttigieg’s campaign estimated the crowd at around 1,200, citing the high school’s custodian, in the city of about 15,000. It was the fourth time this month that Buttigieg has drawn crowds of over 1,000 in the state, said Sean Manning, Buttigieg’s deputy press secretary for Iowa.

COMING UP:

Most candidates are taking some downtime around the Christmas holiday but Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have appearances in first-in-the-nation Iowa on Monday.

(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Indianola, Iowa at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny

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