Smoke hasn’t cleared from the ash heap of Hillary Clinton’s Midwestern firewall. Democrats will need a candidate who can win in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to win back the White House in 2020. Hence the interest in a Rust Belt mayor.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the latest Democrat to join the presidential race. With rust on his resume and a pick-up truck in his driveway, the 37-year-old Midwestern millennial seems like a possible answer to Clinton’s past mistakes.
I launched a presidential exploratory committee because it is a season for boldness and it is time to focus on the future. Are you ready to walk away from the politics of the past?
Join the team at https://t.co/Xlqn10brgH. pic.twitter.com/K6aeOeVrO7
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) January 23, 2019
“When I arrived in office at the beginning of this decade, the national press said that our city was dying,” Buttigieg says in an announcement video that dropped Wednesday. “We propelled our city’s comeback by taking our eyes off the rearview mirror, being honest about change, and insisting on a better future.”
Republicans were ready with gasoline and matches the moment Buttigieg announced.
“Before Buttigieg wastes time on a presidential campaign, he should focus on his town’s sea of potholes and sky-high crime rate. His bid isn’t just bad news for residents, it’s more proof that Democrats are about to endure the most crowded, divisive, and contentious primary in history,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said in a statement.
Just a couple of miles south of Michigan and about equidistant from Illinois and Ohio, South Bend was once an industrial heavyweight. Like most manufacturing centers though, the city was struggling with deindustrialization when the Great Recession hit.
Buttigieg has worked to bring the city back from that brink. He has some success. The population has started to grow for the first time in 50 years. The shuttered Studebaker plant in downtown is being redeveloped into an industrial park optimistically named Ignition Park.
Problems still persist though, providing good talking points for Republican operatives.
They point to FBI data showing South Bend, the fourth largest city in the state, is “the most dangerous city in Indiana.”
They cite the South Bend Tribune to claim that under Buttigieg, “the number of aggravated assaults and rapes in South Bend have doubled” (up from 235 and 55 respectively in 2012 to 562 and 92 in 2017).
They complain about road conditions, which citizens say are the worst they’ve ever seen, to conclude that “residents would rather him fix the town’s countless potholes than waste time running for president.”
These are the little details the GOP hopes political reporters will focus on when they parachute into the city to cover its upstart mayor. Their response shows that Republicans are hell-bent on keeping the Midwest red in 2020.
Yet, while he is little-known for now, it shows the GOP are taking Buttigieg seriously.
