Inside the 2020 campaign with the potential First Gentlemen - POLITICO

But the 2020 husbands also said that in some ways, they feel little has changed from their spouses’ previous elections — “although the scale of this is much, much bigger,” said Bessler, Klobuchar’s husband. Nor has the pressure of the national campaign forced them to change who they are, Chasten Buttigieg said.

“The campaign has never come to me and talked to me about who I am going to present as and who I am going to be to other people,” Buttigieg said in an interview. “Very early on in this process, I looked at this team and said, ‘I’m going to be myself and I’m going to be my authentic self,’ and they said, ‘Yes, you are.’”

So far, Mann said the reception by voters has “been entirely positive.” But he acknowledged that there are “undoubtedly some people out there who believe in traditional gender roles that somehow I’m violating by being married to a prominent woman, but I don’t encounter [that] at all on the trail, which is nice because it means people are focusing on the issues that are important to them.”

Mann — who described his role as Warren’s husband, and “not a policy adviser” — did offer some early feedback on the Massachusetts senator’s stump speech. When she recounted the “twists and turns” of her life — from college scholarship, to falling in love at 19, to getting married and dropping out of school — Warren didn’t initially specify that the story referenced her first husband.

Mann, her second husband, said he “commented rather ruefully, at one point, that when she didn’t make the distinction, some people looked askance at me.”

“She realized some clarification was in order,” Mann said, chuckling.

Emhoff and Buttigieg, who is on leave from teaching during the campaign, are the most public-facing husbands on the trail, often posting selfies together and sounding off on each other’s social media game. When asked whether he had learned any tricks from his millennial counterpart, Emhoff, 55, shot back, “Has he learned from me?”

Mann and Bessler are quieter, but still frequent, presences in the primary and caucus states. Bessler often meets behind the scenes with state legislators seeking support for Klobuchar, while Mann takes the couple’s golden retriever to Warren events. Tulsi Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williamson, is also not a public surrogate for the Hawaii congresswoman, but the cinematographer is occasionally seen filming footage of his wife.

“These guys are used to doing this because they’ve all done it before, and not all of them are following the same path,” said Jefrey Pollock, a Democratic pollster who advised Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s now-finished presidential bid. “Let’s get used to this, because it’s the new normal.”

2019-11-10 11:52:00Z
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiVmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnBvbGl0aWNvLmNvbS9uZXdzLzIwMTkvMTEvMTAvMjAyMC1maXJzdC1odXNiYW5kLWNhbXBhaWduLWNhbmRpZGF0ZXMtMDY4MTQw0gFaaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucG9saXRpY28uY29tL2FtcC9uZXdzLzIwMTkvMTEvMTAvMjAyMC1maXJzdC1odXNiYW5kLWNhbXBhaWduLWNhbmRpZGF0ZXMtMDY4MTQw?oc=5