Mayor Lori Lightfoot Urges Pete Buttigieg to Break NDA

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot confronted presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg at a Friday presidential forum about his prior consulting work.

At the Local America Forum, where leaders of major American cities addressed presidential candidates, Lightfoot said Buttigieg needed to break a nondisclosure agreement with consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

"You should break the NDA," Lightfoot told Buttigieg onstage, according to The Des Moines Register.

Buttigieg has been plagued in the last week by questions about his work a decade ago for the firm. Buttigieg has released some details about his connections with the firm, which has consulted for U.S. Immigration and Border Control, opioid manufacturers, and controversial foreign governments, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

But Buttigieg remains bound by an agreement not to publicly disclose his work, he has said. He has called on McKinsley to release his from that arrangement, and reiterated that to Lightfoot.

"I'm going to give them a chance to do the right thing and then we'll take it from there," Buttigieg said.

Lightfoot and Buttigieg, two of America's most prominent LGBTQ elected leaders, both attended the forum, which gave voice to mayors across the country.

Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., is the last sitting mayor still in the running for president, and he has been leading some polls in Iowa, the first state scheduled to hold its caucuses in 2019.

Lightfoot earlier this year became Chicago's first lesbian mayor.

The forum took place in Waterloo, Iowa. Other former mayors running for president, including former Newark, N.J.. Mayor Cory Booker and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, also participated, as did Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and billionaire Tom Steyer.

All appeared onstage with prominent mayors to answer questions about the presidential election.