{"id":21387,"date":"2019-04-15T08:30:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T13:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=21387"},"modified":"2019-04-15T08:40:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T13:40:47","slug":"nbc-5-mentor-renee-ferguson-boosts-pete-buttigieg-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2019\/04\/15\/nbc-5-mentor-renee-ferguson-boosts-pete-buttigieg-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"NBC 5 mentor Renee Ferguson boosts Pete Buttigieg campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

<\/a> Renee Ferguson<\/p><\/div>\n

When Pete Buttigieg officially kicked off his 2020 presidential bid on Sunday, a former Chicago television news reporter was front and center.<\/p>\n

Among those leading the cheers<\/a> for the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was Renee Ferguson, the longtime broadcast journalist who retired from NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5 <\/a>in 2008.<\/p>\n

Buttigieg, who referred to Ferguson as a \u201cmentor,\u201d worked for her 18 years ago as an investigative intern at NBC 5 when he was an undergraduate student at Harvard College. He also lived with her family for a summer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Pete Buttigieg<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI watched him watching us and I came to understand how truly special Peter Buttigieg was,\u201d she recalled. That\u2019s when she came to consider herself his \u201cother mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPete was easy to \u2018adopt,\u2019 \u201d Ferguson told the crowd at the former Studebaker factory in South Bend. \u201cHis folks had already raised a magnificent young man. . . . He was a great intern.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the internship was over I couldn\u2019t say goodbye. My husband couldn\u2019t say goodbye. . . . In the space of a few months we had come to love each other as family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferguson revved up the audience by comparing Buttigieg with another young politician who battled for recognition with an unlikely name \u2014 Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can pronounce any<\/em> name if it belongs to a person who belongs to us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can pronounce 'Buttigieg' because it means America can move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afterward Ferguson wrote on Facebook:<\/a> It was my great pleasure to speak at today\u2019s #PeteforAmerica rally in South Bend Indiana! My former NBC5 News Intern Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced his candidacy for President of The United States. So proud to be his \u201cOther Mother\u201d his mentor and friend. Pete\u2019s Real Mother Anne and I are Over The Moon with joy! Please support Pete. He\u2019s the real deal and will make a great president.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since retiring from TV news, Ferguson has worked as communications director for U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and as a freelance writing and editing consultant. In 2008 she was inducted in the Silver Circle of the Chicago\/Midwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Pete Buttigieg officially kicked off his 2020 presidential bid on Sunday, a former Chicago television news reporter was front and center. Among those leading the cheers for the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was Renee Ferguson, the longtime broadcast journalist who retired from NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5 in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21387"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21394,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions\/21394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}