Democratic 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg says it's 'statistically almost certain' there have been gay Presidents before

America has had gay Presidents before, Democratic 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg believes.   Buttigieg, who is regarded as the first gay...

America has had gay Presidents before, Democratic 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg believes.  

Buttigieg, who is regarded as the first gay man with any realistic chance of winning a major-party nomination, said it was 'statistically almost certain' that at least one of the 44 men who have held the office was gay. 

Asked which ones, the South Bend mayor said: 'My gaydar doesn't even work that well in the present, let alone retroactively.' 

The 2020 hopeful and Afghanistan veteran celebrated his first wedding anniversary with his husband Chasten yesterday and has suggested they could start a family in the White House. 

Pete Buttigieg, right, yesterday celebrated his first wedding anniversary with his husband Chasten, left (pictured together at a human rights event in Las Vegas last month)  

If elected he would be the first openly gay President, the youngest ever elected at 38 and the first mayor to ascend straight to the White House - giving his campaign historic appeal. 

However, it has also invited concern over whether he is experienced enough for the White House, and whether Americans are ready to elect a gay head of state.  

In an interview with Axios on HBO, he was asked how he would respond to likely attacks that he is 'too young, too liberal [and] too gay'. 

The mayor explained he would talk about his policies and said: 'We have had excellent Presidents who have been young. We have had excellent Presidents who have been liberal. I would imagine we've probably had excellent presidents who were gay - we just didn't know which ones.' 

Challenged on his last point he said it was 'statistically almost certain' that one of the 44 previous Presidents has been gay.  

There are no official statistics on how many Americans are gay, although a survey last year found that the LGBT population as a whole was around 4.5 per cent of the population.   

Some Presidents - notably 15th commander-in-chief James Buchanan, the only lifelong bachelor among the 44 men - have been the subject of speculation. 

There have also been rumours about Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon, although the evidence is a long way from conclusive in either case.  

A poll by Quinnipiac in April found that 70 per cent of Americans say they are open to electing a gay man as President.  

However, only 36 per cent believed that the country was ready to do so.  

'The good news for Mayor Pete Buttigieg is that voters seem ready to accept a gay man as president. The bad news for Buttigieg is that voters believe it just isn't going to happen', a Quinnipiac pollster explained. 

The 70 per cent who were open to voting for a gay man included 85 per cent of Democrats and 46 per cent of Republicans.  

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has boosted his profile enormously since joining the 2020 race. 

His poll numbers surged in the early months of this year, turning him from an outsider into a plausible contender for the nomination.  

Some Democratic polls have put him in third place behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.  

Polls for a hypothetical Buttigieg v Trump race in the fall of 2020 have suggested a close contest.  

Buttigieg would be the youngest person to become president, turning 39 the day before the next inauguration, on January 20, 2021.

Born in 1982, he would also be the first millennial president.  

Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he took office, while John F. Kennedy was 43 and Bill Clinton 46.    

Buttigieg has criticised Donald Trump's campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, saying the way to move the country forward is not to look backward or cling to an old way of life.

'There's a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities: the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back,' he said.

'It comes from people who think the only way to reach communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia, selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised to begin with.'

South Bend, which neighbours the University of Notre Dame, was hit hard by the decline of manufacturing, dating to the 1963 closing of the Studebaker car plant that cost thousands of residents their jobs. 

The hulking, dilapidated factory loomed over the city for much of the past 60 years as what Mr Buttigieg called a daily reminder of South Bend's past.