Now his competitors are rushing to file a flood of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to officials, collecting everything he’s ever said in public or posted on social media, and poring over years-old budgets from South Bend, Indiana, where he’s served as mayor since 2012…

“He’s getting a very significant free pass on a lot of stuff that other candidates aren’t getting a free pass on,” the official said, citing his willingness to take money from lobbyists as an example. “There’s a novelty there. People don’t know anything about him, so he can kind of be whatever people want him to be. But if he sustains this, that will come down to earth.”…

Officials with rival Democratic campaigns said that while they’re still early in the process of digging through his record, they’ve already identified his likely vulnerabilities. A few issues have already worked their way into national press coverage of Buttigieg, including a re-examination of a fraught episode in which he demoted the city’s black police chief, detailed in recent New York Times and NBC News reports.