Could it be presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is a big This is Us fan?
On Monday, the show’s star Mandy Moore will appear at a town hall with the former South Bend mayor at Iowa State University in Ames. The move comes just three weeks before Feb. 3’s Iowa Democratic caucus. She will officially throw her endorsement behind Buttigieg, her spokeperson confirms to Billboard.
Politics aren’t new for Moore: She was an outspoken proponent of the 2017 Women’s March and joined Kristin Chenoweth, Elizabeth Banks, Sheryl Crow and several others on “Our Fight Song,” a remake of Rachel Platten?’s “Fight Song” video supporting Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic Convention.
“I think all of us don’t really have a choice to sit back. We can’t not be political any more,” she told WWD in 2017. “We don’t have a choice. We don’t have the option necessarily. It’s our duty to step up and keep ourselves as informed and educated as we can stand to be. Because sometimes it’s easier to stick your head in the sand. So I’m trying day-by-day to put one foot in front of the other.”
Moore is not the first artist to appear with Buttigieg: Ben Harper supported the candidate at an Iowa event in November. And while she didn’t endorse him, Lizzo and Buttigieg had quite the encounter on CBS This Morning in December.
Moore has been busy recording her first album in 10 years. Silver Landings will comes out in early March on Verve Forecast. “I had slight PTSD from being on labels in the past,” Moore recently told Billboard, “But Verve truly feels like it’s run by a bunch of deeply creative people who aren’t necessarily just concerned with the numbers game.”
Moore starts a four-week weekly residency at Los Angeles’ Bootleg Theater Jan. 18.