“I didn’t want to be like them,” Ulrich said of bullies he met at school. However, losing those teeth gave Ulrich a sense of resiliency against criticism. The family couldn’t afford the dental work, and his mom cried when she found him trying to cut out replacements from a set of toy teeth - the kind worn at Halloween. And when Buttigieg was sworn in as the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, Ulrich said, he felt a deep personal resonance at the sight of Chasten holding the Bible as Pete swore to defend the Constitution. Ulrich said he felt astonishment watching Pete Buttigieg kiss his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, when he announced his campaign. In recent years, he watched another former Midwestern mayor - also Christian, also a veteran - mount the first viable presidential bid by an openly queer candidate. So people knew what they were getting and that I ran to get good things done.” “I didn’t hide I was gay, but I didn’t shove it in their face. Or perhaps townspeople simply remembered Ulrich as someone who grew up alongside them. Perhaps that $1.2 million he got in grants to fix up the city helped. But Bunceton residents shrugged in the voting booth, reelecting him 12 times in a row.
