The end of Pete Buttigieg’s term as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, on Dec. 31 comes at a fortuitous time for him in the Democratic presidential race, freeing him from mayoral obligations a full month before the first state nominating contests begin while his competitors tend to Washington obligations.

Buttigieg, 37, will become a full-time candidate as most of his primary competitors are due to be pulled away from Iowa and New Hampshire so they can sit in the Senate observing impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Joe Biden, 77, is the only other top-tier candidate able to campaign unrestricted, but he has been sticking to what one Democrat described as an "old man schedule."

If the House impeaches Trump before Congress’s winter recess, a Senate trial could take place around the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary. That severely complicates a crucial time period for the six senators seeking the Democratic presidential nomination: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

Warren, 70, and Sanders, 78, are the highest-polling of the senator candidates. Buttigieg currently leads the RealClearPolitics average of primary polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, but some polls show him falling behind Sanders or Warren.

Biden has held 53 events in Iowa while Warren held 68, Buttigieg held 82, and Sanders held 93, according to the Des Moines Register ’s candidate tracker. NECN found that Biden has visited New Hampshire 27 times compared to 51 for Sanders and Warren, and 56 for Buttigieg.

Perhaps in response to polling pressure, Biden is set to embark on an uncharacteristically long eight-day Iowa bus tour after Thanksgiving. “Joe is going to work harder than anyone else to earn the support of Iowans across the entire Hawkeye State,” Biden campaign manager Greg Schultz said last week.

The end of Buttigieg’s mayoral term frees him from pressures that his mayoral office put on his campaign. The South Bend Tribune reported in May that Buttigieg was spending about half his time away from his city.

In June, Buttigieg faced protesters, and national media pressure after a white South Bend police officer shot and killed a black man. He was asked why the city’s police force lost black officers during his term during his first Democratic primary debate.

“I couldn’t get it done,” Buttigieg said. "Until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time, not just from what happened in the past but from what is happening around the country in the present."

Buttigieg took office in 2012 and easily won reelection in 2015. While he was mayor, Buttigieg, now 37, took a seven-month leave of absence to deploy to Afghanistan as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer, publicly came out as gay, and in 2018 married Chasten Buttigieg, a teacher.