Patrick Wojahn, the Maryland mayor busted on charges of possessing child pornography Thursday has had a longtime mentor-mentee relationship with President Biden’s embattled Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Former College Park Mayor Wojahn, 47, has credited Buttigieg’s “mentorship” with helping him advance his career in interviews.
“I actually met Mayor Pete Buttigieg shortly after I was elected mayor in 2015,” Wojahn, who is gay, told the Washington Blade, an LGBT-focused news outlet, back in 2019.
Wojahn explained how the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, who is also gay, was tasked with being his “buddy” at a gathering of mayors in Washington long before Buttigieg’s 2020 White House run.
“I went to the US Conference of Mayors’ Winter Meeting in DC in January [2015] and he was assigned to be my buddy,” Wojahn told the outlet.
Wojahn said that after meeting Buttigieg, the two would continue to talk on the phone and both later attended a White House event during the Obama administration.
“I now serve in a leadership role as vice chair of city livability and bicycling in part due to his mentorship,” Wojahn said of Buttigieg, adding that they would discuss the challenges of being openly gay mayors.
“We talked about balancing competing interests,” Wojahn told the Washington Blade.
In 2019, Wojahn shared a photo of himself on Twitter with his arm around Buttiegieg, captioned: “Just two mayors, grabbing a beer together. #MayorPete”
Wojahn would go on to back his mentor’s 2020 presidential campaign, tweeting another photo that same year of himself wearing a “Pete 2020” button with the former South Bend mayor.
Visitor logs and his social media accounts show that Wojahn has visited the White House at least six times since President Biden’s inauguration — and since his mentor was appointed to lead the Department of Transportation, according to Fox News.
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