Pete Buttigieg's campaign manager, Mike Schmuhl, has never worked for a candidate outside of Indiana. | Lyndon French/POLITICO

Before the Democratic presidential debate in Columbus, Ohio, Mike Schmuhl ventured into the city to get his mop of red hair cut. It wasn’t so much that Schmuhl himself needed a trim — but Pete Buttigieg’s campaign manager wanted to make sure the barbershop was up to the task of a presidential shave.

Thirty minutes later, after the Royal Rhino Club Barbershop and Lounge passed muster and Schmuhl made an appointment under the name “Max Harris,” another aide who got his hair trimmed, Buttigieg himself appeared for a fresh pre-debate cut.

It’s not the type of assignment you’d normally associate with the most prestigious job in politics.

But Schmuhl — an even-keeled, attention-deflecting 36-year-old prone to telling staffers up and down the org chart that they have “the most critical” job on the campaign — has taken a decidedly unconventional path into presidential campaign management. Schmuhl has never staffed a statewide or national political run, unlike most other presidential campaign managers. The biggest campaign he managed before taking charge of Buttigieg’s presidential bid is a House race. In fact, he’s never worked for a candidate outside of Indiana. When he briefly lived in Washington, D.C., he worked at the Washington Post, not on Capitol Hill. He’s not on Twitter.

“I’ve worked for Pete, for Joe Donnelly, for Mel Hall, for Shelli Yoder,” Schmuhl said, rattling off the names of Indiana congressional candidates. “It just so happens that one of them is running for president, and honestly, if one of them wasn’t, I wouldn’t be doing this. And it just so happens the one I know the best, the one I’ve known for the longest time, is the one who is running.”

That is Schmuhl’s greatest qualification for shepherding the $50 million startup that is this longshot-turned-frontrunning campaign: He’s the Buttigieg whisperer — the childhood friend who has one of the biggest jobs in the 2020 primary. Schmuhl’s resume is glaringly modest for his position, something he shares with his boss, who’s running for president at age 37.

Schmuhl, who managed Buttigieg’s 2011 South Bend, Ind., mayoral run and became his first chief of staff, and Buttigieg, who is deeply involved in his own political strategy, share a shorthand that aides and former staffers likened to a secret language — a depth of trust that you only “have with somebody you’ve known for so long,” Buttigieg said in an interview.

(Occasionally, Buttigieg and Schmuhl will literally communicate in another language, dipping seamlessly into French when they want to speak privately in a car packed with other people.)

Schmuhl, Buttigieg continued, “shares a lot of my instincts, but can also press or nudge me when I’m kind of veering off where I need to be. …He uniquely understands both my story and my city’s story, and those two things are so important to each other and they’re so important to this campaign.”

Trust with the candidate is “the most important part of the job” of campaign manager, but another “important part is being the truth-teller,” said Jim Messina, who managed President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. But "that’s the challenge with friends. Are they able to have those tough conversations?”

‘Some catching up to do’

Schmuhl isn’t a familiar face on the national political scene, but at a union hall in South Bend on a chilly fall night, everyone knows him. Schmuhl cataloged nearly all of the people attending a vote for St. Joseph County Democratic Party chairman: a state representative here, a city councilman in that corner, former Sen. Joe Donnelly’s wife over there, the former fire chief stopping by for a hug.

“This is a good test for me,” Schmuhl joked.

It’s been a year of tests. Buttigieg rocketed into the group of contenders for the Democratic nomination earlier this year thanks to a flair for composed yet viral answers to interviewers’ questions, among other raw political talents. Whatever his flaws, which rival candidates are now litigating daily on the campaign trail, Buttigieg was undoubtedly ready to seize the opportunity. That left Schmuhl scrambling to keep up with his friend, as the campaign rapidly multiplied in size and attracted critical scrutiny.

In a few months, Buttigieg’s email list grew from 24,000 people to over 1 million; the campaign headquarters expanded from one room with donated furniture and WiFi hotspots to 60 offices throughout the country; and the payroll has grown to over 500 staffers now, from just a handful in January.

But the process has not been one smooth upward line, and some of the missteps along the way exposed the campaign’s inexperience, starting with Buttigieg and Schmuhl.

Buttigieg, who has struggled to gain traction among African American voters, was painfully slow to get organized in South Carolina — an early problem that has become a recurring negative theme on the trail. His campaign later stumbled over releasing a list of disputed endorsements of Buttigieg’s Douglass Plan, a policy proposal that targets systemic racism, and the use of a stock image of a Kenyan woman.

In October, the campaign cut ties with donor Steve Patton, a Chicago lawyer who tried to block the release of footage of the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald, sparking a warning from David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist, to “hire one more” staffer and “put them on vetting.” 

“There were some glaring missteps by the campaign, especially as it relates to the most reliable voting bloc in the Democratic primary,” said J.A. Moore, a South Carolina state representative. “Our politics in South Carolina is all about relationships, and they are new.”

Schmuhl acknowledged that it’s “fair to say we had some catching up to do.” But “we literally came from almost nothing to where we are now, so it just took a little bit of a lag time getting there.”

It became clear by June — after Buttigieg blew past senators and governors in fundraising and early polling — that Schmuhl had too much on his plate. He had nearly 20 people reporting directly to him, and “that was unsustainable,” he said.

Schmuhl brought on reinforcements, building a campaign staff that is 40 percent people of color and filling out the senior team with seasoned hands with far deeper resumes than his own, including Larry Grisolano, a messaging consultant who worked on Obama’s presidential runs; Jess O’Connell, former CEO of the Democratic National Committee; Brandon Neal, former DNC political director; Hari Sevugan, another Obama alum and an experienced Democratic strategist; and Michael Halle, who played a key role in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and managed Democrats’ gubernatorial campaign in Ohio in 2018.

“The folks [Schmuhl] brought in, clearly more experienced than him, clearly very smart, talented people, but he’s confident enough to bring them in,” said Jeff Link, an Iowa-based Democratic consultant who’s unaffiliated in the primary. “He’s not trying to keep out smart people who might challenge him.”

Schmuhl freely admits to the imbalance, saying “the two folks on the campaign who don’t have modern presidential campaign experience are me and Pete. I’m pretty up front with people about what I don’t know.”

On David Plouffe’s podcast,  “Campaign HQ,” Schmuhl talked to Obama’s former campaign manager about mitigating that experience shortage by bringing “together people who can specialize in their areas so you don’t have to.”

'The guy knows how to keep you on edge'

Schmuhl isn’t outside the norm as a longtime loyalist managing a 2020 presidential campaign. Roger Lau has been in Elizabeth Warren’s orbit for nearly a decade, helping steer her to victory in both of her Senate races. Greg Schultz served as Joe Biden’s senior political adviser during his second term as vice president. Justin Buoen took his first job on Amy Klobuchar’s first Senate campaign in 2006, sticking with her ever since.

But Schmuhl and Buttigieg’s relationship stretches back much further than most.

They first met when Schmuhl was in eighth grade: Buttigieg, then a ninth-grader, led him on a tour of St. Joseph’s High School in South Bend. Their fathers both taught at the University of Notre Dame and knew each other, but the boys hadn’t met until Buttigieg helped Schmuhl learn where the cafeteria was. They were both only children, “short, pudgy, shy and bookish,” in Schmuhl’s retelling.

The pair took different paths and stayed in infrequent contact after becoming friends in high school. While Buttigieg left for Harvard University, Schmuhl stayed close to home at Notre Dame, followed by a three-year stint as a producer and a booker at the Washington Post. But Schmuhl, drawn to political work, got his resume to then-Rep. Joe Donnelly and returned to South Bend as a field representative in the congressman’s office.

Then in 2010, Donnelly, a Blue Dog Democrat in a red district who voted for Obamacare, faced the prospect of losing reelection. But Donnelly picked Schmuhl, who had never worked on any campaign before, to manage his race because, Donnelly said, he “doesn’t worry about who gets the credit, just the getting it done.” Joel Elliott, Donnelly’s former chief of staff, assigned it to Schmuhl’s “preternaturally calm” disposition.

Donnelly scraped together a narrow 2010 victory. Buttigieg, who ran for Indiana state treasurer, got crushed in the general election. But Buttigieg and Schmuhl kept running into each other on the trail, and in the “aftermath of both races, we started talking about what’s next,” Schmuhl said.

What happened next runs parallel in some ways to the 2020 presidential primary, said Dan Parker, the former Indiana Democratic Party chairman. Buttigieg, then 29 years old, cut through a crowded primary of familiar party leaders to become mayor of South Bend, running an upstart campaign based on the themes of economic revitalization and generational change. And Schmuhl managed it.

“The more I think about it, the more the 2011 primary race for mayor mirrors the kind of campaign they’re running for president right now — a newcomer with an optimistic tone,” Parker said.

Schmuhl became Buttigieg’s chief of staff and did a brief stint as the district Democratic Party chairman, but he left after one and a half years to go to graduate school in Paris. His going-away gift from Buttigieg was a “Hand of the King” pin from “Game of Thrones,” which now sits on Schmuhl’s desk in South Bend. “I don’t exactly wear it around,” Schmuhl said, flashing the badge, a symbol of the second-in-command in the show.

One day while Schmuhl was in France, over Skype, Buttigieg dropped the news that he was gay. Thinking back on it, Schmuhl, one of the first people Buttigieg told, said he wasn’t “crazy surprised.” He’d always just assumed Buttigieg “didn’t really have time to date or anything — I thought about it that way.” The conversation turned quickly to how Buttigieg would make his sexual orientation public in Indiana.

Schmuhl observed that when Buttigieg drops big news on him, it usually starts out casually.

“‘Hey man, I’m thinking of running for mayor. Hey man, I’m going to Afghanistan. Hey man, I’m gay. Hey man, I want to be DNC chairman. Hey man, I think I might run for president,’” Schmuhl said.

“The guy knows how to keep you on edge.”

Building a long-shot campaign

By the fall of 2018, after a few years at the Democratic consulting firm 270 Strategies, Schmuhl returned to South Bend again, this time to lay groundwork for Buttigieg’s presidential campaign alongside Lis Smith, who started serving as a senior adviser to Buttigieg when he ran for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017.

Smith — a fierce, New York-based Democratic operative — admitted that she “didn’t know exactly what to make of [Schmuhl] when we first met because our styles are so different and he likes to sit back and observe,” she said, describing her and Schmuhl as a yin-yang force. “We probably had tense moments, but I can count them on two fingers.”

“It’s a little off-cast for people who would traditionally run presidential campaigns,” said Jeremy Bird, who served as the Obama reelection campaign’s national field director and hired Schmuhl to work at 270 Strategies, his consulting firm, in 2015. “In a political world where people are often focused on chest bumping, hyperbole and being louder to be heard, Schmuhl is not that. He listens.”

Schmuhl and Smith hashed out Buttigieg’s strategy over beers at the Rusty Knot, a West Village bar, and over board games in Buttigieg’s living room in South Bend. “It was hardly a cast of thousands around a big conference room table,” Smith said, calling the early days of the Buttigieg campaign “a pipe dream and a bit fantastical.”

But Buttigieg soon outgrew the small beginnings of his campaign. Sitting in the green room backstage after a mid-March CNN town hall, a producer approached Schmuhl with an iPad and said, “I want you to look at something.” The screen showed online engagement during the three-hour broadcast, which featured Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Rep. John Delaney and Buttigieg.

“It’s two hours of a completely flat line, and the final 45 minutes, it’s just this —” Schmuhl swept his hand steeply upward. “That was the first kind of inkling something was up.”

While Buttigieg’s fundraising and his attention from voters and the media rose rapidly in the spring, the campaign’s infrastructure was slower to grow in the early states. “It still didn’t seem real then,” said Grant Woodard, a longtime Democratic operative in Iowa, describing some “staff types who thumbed their nose at Buttigieg’s campaign” as it was trying to expand.

A lot of that fell on Schmuhl’s plate, as he sought to build on-the-ground infrastructure and a senior leadership team. “When you throw 450 people into a project in a tight amount of time, it’s a lot of people, it’s a lot of personalities,” said Schmuhl, who admitted to only getting “hot” three times during the presidential race, though he declined to explain further. “There’s going to be quirks.”

Over the summer, when the mayor began to sink in national polling after his early splash, Buttigieg’s top staffers were at odds over coordination between the campaign’s two main offices in South Bend and Chicago. The group was “intractably split over what to do,” said one senior Buttigieg official. “But we were not working well not being in the same place.”

Schmuhl took in the arguments and made the decision: Everything would be in South Bend. Staffers moved soon after.

Buttigieg staffers said Schmuhl is tasked with the hard conversations, often “riding in the car alone with Pete before big events, before debates,” Smith said. “If there’s something that Pete needs to hear, and just one person alone, Mike’s the designated person.”

As Buttigieg faces more heat and pressure, there will be more of those moments. At last week’s Democratic debate, Amy Klobuchar skewered Buttigieg’s experience, questioning whether a candidate who couldn’t win his state could lead the Democratic ticket against President Donald Trump.

But Schmuhl is aware that anytime someone questions Buttigieg’s experience, the same question applies to him: In the most consequential Democratic primary in recent history, was he prepared to handle the job?

For all the times he’s heard the question, asked or implied, he still struggles with an answer.

“I think that Pete is —” Schmuhl said, breaking off and tearing up over ramen at the Crooked Ewe, a brewery on the banks of the St. Joseph River.

“Pete is somebody who makes people around him better,” Schmuhl went on. “He’s the kind of MVP who makes the whole team better. He makes me better.”

“I’ve completely realized that I’m not a traditional campaign manager, and I think the things I’ve done in my life and how well I know Pete, I think we’re a good team and we’re a good package,” Schmuhl continued.

Still, when asked for a moment when he and Buttigieg disagreed — a moment when a friend who also happens to be your campaign manager could deliver a much-needed hard truth — Schmuhl blew out his cheeks and thought for 30 seconds. He declined to share those thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Schmuhl said.

Buttigieg, for his part, reached into a past campaign and described a moment in his 2011 mayoral race when his friend sat him down and asked, “I need to know if you want to win this.” Skimping on additional details or conflict, Buttigieg said he and Schmuhl “needed to sharpen a lot of things in the campaign, and we did.”

“And we won.”