According to American media, the scene took place Monday evening in Cresco, a rural town in the north of this Midwestern state which launched the primary season.
The footage, just over two minutes long, was shared Tuesday by local Democratic Party official Laura Hubka.
“Are you telling me he has a same-sex partner? Pete?” asks the voter at the start of this exchange with a representative of the candidate.
“Yes, he is married,” replies the young woman.
“So I don’t want anyone like that in the White House,” says the lady, asking for her ballot to be returned.
Obviously embarrassed, the representative of the Buttigieg campaign points out that the ex-mayor of South Bend (Indiana) “is a human being, like you and me, and that should not be important”.
“How come we said nothing before”, asks the voter who claims “never to have known” the sexual orientation of the moderate candidate, who however has never hidden his homosexuality since the start of the campaign .
A tense conversation about the Bible ensues.
“Why does it say in the Bible that a man should marry a woman?” summarizes the voter, who wears a sticker of support for Amy Klobuchar, another moderate candidate.
“I totally respect your point of view,” says the representative with a smile. “I think we have differences of interpretation,” she says, keeping her composure when the voter accuses her of not being a believer.
It is not known if the voter finally took back her ballot.
In a speech during which he celebrated “his astonishing victory” in Iowa, the state where he came first in the Democratic primary according to partial results published on Tuesday, the 38-year-old former mayor seemed to refer to his sexual orientation and personal history.
This result “proves that, for a child somewhere wondering if he or she or ‘they’ belong among their own family, if you believe in yourself or in your country, then your belief will find strengthened”, he declared, using in English the neutral pronoun “they”, which can be translated in French by “iel”, contraction of “il” and “elle”.
In Iowa, a Buttigieg voter wants to change her vote because of her homosexuality
Des Moines, United States | AFP | Tuesday, 02/04/2020 – “He has a same-sex partner?”: An Iowa voter asked to change her vote in favor of Pete Buttigieg after learning that the Democratic candidate was gay, in a courteous exchange but tense aired Tuesday on Twitter.