Pete Buttigieg's presidential hopes make him an easy target for Republicans — and his slow response in Ohio gave them plenty of ammo

• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hasn't ruled out running for the White House again.
• He's in the spotlight and the hot seat far more than most other transportation secretaries before him.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hasn't ruled out running for the White House again. But before he reaches higher, he must resolve his "Google problem," as one Democratic strategist put it.

"If you type his name into Google, the first 10 things that come up are not great," said Adrian Hemond, CEO of the bipartisan consulting firm Grassroots Midwest in Michigan, Buttigieg's new home state.

The search-engine test shows Buttigieg has become a high-profile target who finds himself in the spotlight far more than most other transportation secretaries before him.

Some attacks have been personal, aimed at Buttigieg's paternity leave or job qualifications. But he's also taken hits, mostly from the right but also on the progressive left, for the supply chain crisis, the Southwest holiday flight cancelation debacle, and his handling of the hazardous-materials train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. He acknowledged he could have expressed his concern for the community "sooner" after waiting 10 days to speak out.

"Politics 101 — you've got to speak to the pain of the people," former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a longtime ally of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, told Insider. "He's in over his head, he ain't qualified to do this job, and he needs to go."

On the GOP side, former President Donald Trump, who showed up in Ohio a day before Buttigieg, criticized him for not being there already, Florida senators sparred with him on Twitter, and several GOP House lawmakers introduced a resolution calling on him to resign over his record as secretary.

Now he's also on defense against a DOT Inspector General audit of his use of government planes for official trips, instigated by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has called for his resignation and accused Buttigieg of demonstrating "a gross level of incompetence and apathy" in his job. Buttigieg says he welcomes the review of his travels to "get past the politics."

The transportation job was expected to be a resume booster for Buttigieg, a 41-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who won the 2020 Iowa caucuses and gained a following as the first openly gay, major Democratic presidential candidate. He is considered to be a viable future candidate, with a favorability rating among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents that has improved since he ran for president, according NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist polling.

But the next years clearly won't be easy, especially given his political aspirations. He'll have to push back against GOP investigations and critics, all while working to implement the Biden administration's massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, historic legislation designed to upgrade roads, bridges, ports, airports, and other public works.

"Assuming, rightly, that he wants to run for something in the future, yeah, absolutely it's a problem," Hemond said of the bad headlines. "He needs a couple of wins."

His move to Michigan in July sparked speculation about his next job in politics. He has said he isn't interested in running for the state's open Senate seat. But Hemond said Buttigieg could potentially run for governor there.

"He definitely has some repair work to do to get to the point where he's a viable candidate," he said. "It seems pretty clear at this point that he needs to win something else before he can try running for president again."

Using his star power to his advantage

Buttigieg isn't the first DOT secretary to come under fire. His predecessor in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao, faced allegations of misusing office resources, though the Justice Department declined to investigate.

However, no transportation secretary has likely entered the job with more star power. After he strode onto the stage of The Late Show last fall, host Stephen Colbert noted that not many transportation secretaries have been guests on late night talk shows.

"Well, I'm glad to be part of changing that," Buttigieg responded before geeking out over the childhood "magic" of trucks, roads, and planes, and projects like a biomass power plant in New Hampshire that will be used to help melt snow on sidewalks.

"Any mayor from north of a certain latitude knows that the battle of mayors versus snow is second only to the battle of mayors versus potholes," he told Colbert.

Jeff Davis, of the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation, said he has been studying transportation for 25 years and it has been "very strange" to see the secretary of the "low-key" transportation department making the rounds on the late-night talk show circuit.

"Because we've never had a secretary who had national political ambitions before, people are treating him a little more differently than they would a regular secretary of transportation," Davis said.

His high-profile stature "does make him a natural target for criticism," said Elaine Nessle, executive director of the lobbying group Coalition for America's Gateways and Trade Corridors. "I'm sure that the general public probably can't remember the names of our past several secretaries of transportation."

He has been able to use his name recognition to his advantage, however, when it comes to promoting the infrastructure law's investments. "I think that he's added value in that way," she said.

Buttigieg has proven himself adept at breaking down complex issues into digestible soundbites and firing back at his opponents, including on Fox News.

He responded to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's poke at him for pursuing "woke initiatives" by pointing to the bridge the department is funding in McConnell's home state of Kentucky.

"And Leader McConnell could be enormously helpful by joining us in standing up to the railroad industry lobby to make hazardous trains safer," he added.

Since the infrastructure law passed in 2021, the Transportation Department has churned out funding for projects across the country while standing up new competitive funding programs under the law.

"It's difficult to understate what a large task that is in terms of standing up all of these new programs," Nessle said.

DOT, not NTSB

Overseeing all of that is part of his job. What's not his job: Answering for the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency charged by Congress with investigating transportation accidents.

Buttigieg schooled House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on this recently when the Kentucky Republican announced an investigation of Buttigieg's response to the train derailment and referenced a preliminary report from "DOT's National Transportation Safety Board."

"I am alarmed to learn that the Chair of the House Oversight Committee thinks that the NTSB is part of our Department. NTSB is independent (and with good reason)," Buttigieg tweeted in response.

His tug-of-war with Republicans will likely continue as several committees probe the crash.

For his part, Buttigieg has been slamming Trump for rescinding a rule requiring better brakes on high-hazard cargo trains, pushing for freight rail accountability, and calling on Congress to increase maximum fines that DOT can hit rail companies with for violating safety rules.

The current maximum fine of $225,455, the department says, is a "rounding error" for a company reporting an operating income in the billions. McConnell could help change that, Buttigieg said.

"The freight rail industry has wielded a lot of power here in Washington," Buttiegieg said on CNN. "I would love to see Leader McConnell join us in standing up to them."