WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg returned to Iowa this week for his first public event since winning the state’s 2020 Democratic presidential caucuses with a new look, changing up his youthful, clean-shaven appearance with a dark, scruffy beard.
The former secretary of transportation’s bristly makeover has been making headlines and generating buzz ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run. One of the party’s better messengers, Buttigieg has been seeking out new audiences in his case against Donald Trump’s administration, including on right-leaning platforms with mostly male viewerships where beards often scream man.
“It was very rare in my former life that I could go more than a day without shaving,” he explained recently.
After last year’s disastrous election result for Democrats, in which young men shifted toward Trump, prominent Democratic officials are making a concentrated effort to appeal to apolitical men under 30, including on podcasts and sports radio shows. Some are pairing this with tougher-looking aesthetics that, until recently, have been far more popular among the MAGA set.
Both of Trump’s elder sons, Eric and Don Jr., grew beards during their father’s first term, parading their machismo on hunting and fishing trips across the country. It took him a while, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) finally grew a decent-looking beard in 2018 in a preview of his political makeover from longtime partisan bomb-thrower to bipartisan-minded lawmaker.
And Vice President JD Vance broke the hairy ceiling in 2024 by becoming the first major-party nominee with facial hair in 75 years, putting him in an advantageous position to inherit the MAGA movement in 2028 despite all his unshaven criticism of Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. If he runs in a few years, as is expected, he could become the first bearded president since Benjamin Harrison in 1893.
More Democrats are now trying to gain a similar edge. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, another potential 2028 contender who has been rallying against Republican cuts to social safety net programs across the country, joined the Senate beard caucus recently. His facial hair gives off more of a five o’clock shadow, as if to say, “I don’t have time to shave, I’m too busy fighting Trump.”
Arizona’s Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego has rocked a solid beard for over 20 years now. But the Marine Corps veteran’s tough talk about Trump at a rally in the battleground state of Pennsylvania last week, as well as his rollout of a new immigration plan that increases border enforcement, has also grown speculation about a presidential run.
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Beards and mustaches were more common among politicians in the early- and mid-20th century, but their prevalence declined for a variety of reasons, including changing social norms and the rise of television. Research has found that members of Congress with facial hair were perceived as more masculine, but also that women may be less likely to vote for candidates with facial hair.
Christopher Oldstone-Moore, a professor at Wright State University and author of the 2015 book “Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair,” believes that the world may be entering its “fifth bearded era,” stretching from today’s hipster beards all the way back to Hadrian, the Roman emperor.
Today’s politicians, he argued, are simply responding to broader cultural trends, including Trump’s wins over two female Democratic presidential candidates.
“Lying behind a lot of the political currents is a whole discussion about masculinity,” he said in an interview with HuffPost. “What is the status of men in society? Look at all the issues that drive the culture war; they all revolve around gender.”
“The right has been leading in the beard movement recently, and I think the left has been trying to play catch-up,” he added.
Murphy first chided HuffPost when approached for this story, suggesting we focus on bigger issues. Which, fair.
But then he joked he was growing a “democracy beard,” and that he’d get rid of it once Trump stopped forcing a constitutional crisis by defying legal rulings and trampling on the powers of Congress.
“That feels like a longer-term project, and this thing’s starting to itch, so I don’t know,” he said earlier this week, suggesting he may instead shave it if the Boston Celtics basketball team won the NBA championship. (Tough news on that front.)
Gallego, meanwhile, called himself “the OG” of beards and welcomed his fellow Democratic colleagues to the club. Asked if he would ever get rid of his, he said, “My wife would probably divorce me.”
“The right has been leading in the beard movement recently, and I think the left has been trying to play catch-up.”
– Christopher Oldstone-Moore, author, “Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair”
Republican members of the Senate beard caucus — which includes Todd Young of Indiana and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma — teased the newcomers, suggesting their fuzz was about more than just looks.
“Maybe Democrats are listening to the voters and discovering they need to be more like Republicans,” Cruz chuckled to HuffPost.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who grew a nicely trimmed white beard a bit reminiscent of Santa Claus earlier this year before shaving it off at the urging of his wife, said he believed Democrats were growing facial hair to make themselves look “rugged, more man-of-the-people sort of thing.”
He added: “They probably ought to do it with policy, instead.”
Seung Min Kim / The Associated Press
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), one of two mustachioed members of the Senate, said he was amazed by the growth of follicles in a legislative body where styles since the early 20th century have been strictly clean-cut and traditionalist.
“When I first came to the Senate [in 2010], I don’t think there was any other facial hair here,” Hoeven told HuffPost. “When [Maine Sen.] Angus King came to the Senate, he showed up with his mustache, he was the second mustache.”
“Then the goatee came on and the Van Dyke,” he continued. “Then you had some guys — Hombre Lobo [“Werewolf” in Spanish], which is what I call Ted Cruz, went with the expanded Van Dyke. Then, after that, the beard thing took over. It’s amazing how many beards we got around here.”
“Here’s the thing,” Hoeven warned. “Some men can grow a good beard, and some men, not so much. So it really depends on whether you can grow a good beard.”
Other Democratic senators, like Raphael Warnock of Georgia and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, are sticking with the more controversial choice of a goatee. But Warnock has no qualms about his. “I’m for the goatees,” he declared proudly.
As for Buttigieg, who hasn’t yet decided to stick with a beard, experts say he should keep it.
“When someone like Pete decides, ‘I’m going to grow a beard,’ that’s saying he’s a very serious candidate,” Oldstone-Moore said. “I think he’s thinking, ‘Maybe a beard can give me, literally, more of an edge,’ an edgy, strong look. I think it helps him.”
Full disclosure: The author of this story has a beard.