Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is back in Iowa, holding a town hall event in Cedar Rapids, setting off talk of a possible 2028 presidential run. Buttigieg became the first out gay major party candidate to win a state primary contest in 2020 when he won the Iowa caucuses.

“His speech sounded like he was preparing for a second White House bid,” wrote the AP’s Thomas Beaumont, noting that Buttigieg criticized the current administration and said that Democrats need to make their agenda clear and to reach out to swing and moderate voters, a message has has been delivering regularly lately in media appearances.

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“It feels really good to be back in Iowa,” he said in remarks before taking questions at the town hall, which was sponsored by the Democratic group VoteVets. “Anyone can come to Iowa just before an election’s coming up. I wanted to make sure I got a chance to talk to the people I got to know five and six years ago, and the people I’m just getting to know.”

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He told the crowd that Democrats need to have a message that doesn’t center on the current president.

“There’s this theory that we should just hang back and let them screw up,” he said. “I disagree.”

“This whole debate in my party is all about how him — how much to accommodate him,” he said. “We need to be a little bit more in touch with our first principles.”

He mentioned several principles, including restoring the federal right to an abortion, a line that got him a 30-second standing ovation.

Buttigieg ran for president in 2020 and faced criticism for having so little political experience, having been mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a small midwestern college town. But he spent a substantial amount of time in that primary in Iowa, winning over voters with his positive, center-left vision for America’s future, and he was able to carry that state’s Democratic caucuses.

That didn’t build momentum for other states, though, and he eventually dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden.

Now he is a resident of Michigan, a father of two, and has spent four years getting D.C. political experience as the first out gay Cabinet secretary during the Biden administration. There was talk that Buttigieg would run for one of the two statewide open offices in 2026 – the state’s Democratic governor and senior U.S. senator, also a Democrat, are not seeking reelection next year – but Buttigieg has already said that he won’t run for either.

Perhaps, some speculated, it would be too awkward to run for Senate or governor in 2026 and then, immediately after that election, launch a presidential campaign.

“You can expect to see him continuing this conversation with Americans across the country,” one unnamed Buttigieg adviser told Politico. While Iowa had a privileged position as the first primary contest every four years for the past several decades, that may not be the case in 2028.

“It would be silly to do an event like this and not capture content for supporters and donors for whatever you’re going to do in the future,” another former staffer said, explaining why Buttigieg was being followed by a videographer at the Iowa event.

But when asked about whether he was mounting a 2028 presidential campaign, Buttigieg himself was tight-lipped. “Right now, I’m not running for anything,” he said.

“Part of what’s exciting and compelling about an opportunity like this is to be campaigning for values and for ideas, rather than a specific electoral campaign. So that’s what I’m about. But of course, it means a lot to hear that people who supported me then continue to believe in what I have to say.”

On social media, Politico’s Adam Wren shared an image of an “I’m all in for Pete” bumper sticker being handed out at the event. The sticker links to a website run by a PAC supporting Buttigieg—not by Buttigieg himself—that says it has “the single goal of encouraging Pete Buttigieg to run for President of the United States by demonstrating the broad support he has in every corner of this great nation.”

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