Pete Buttigieg’s presidential run is at a crossroads after a fatal police shooting in South Bend brings issues with black voters to the fore.
A town hall featuring Mayor Pete Buttigieg broke into near chaos Sunday afternoon as the Democratic presidential candidate tried to respond to community concerns over a white police officer killing a black man in the city.
The tragedy unfolded in Buttigieg’s city on June 16, and it would be difficult to imagine a domestic crisis more nightmarish for a mayor and a presidential candidate who has enjoyed a largely carefree rise to the top tier of Democratic contestants. “This was a trail of gasoline that was waiting to be ignited, and last week it ignited,” Sims said of the hometown strife now surrounding Buttigieg.
But at home, Buttigieg is a much more common figure in American politics: a white politician struggling to connect with his black constituents, whose lives are plagued by grinding poverty and violence that their wunderkind mayor has been unable to repair after seven years in office. South Bend, Ind., resident John Winston Jr., left, talks with other activists guarding the site of a memorial where a resident was shot and killed by a police officer.
While running as a mayor has allowed Buttigieg to skip some of the usual steps on the way to the Oval Office – like, say, winning a statewide office first – being an executive also has its downsides. Buttigieg’s response to the police shooting in South Bend, said Bill Carrick, one of the country’s top Democratic strategists, will be closely scrutinized because of its relevance to the Democratic nomination contest.
Buttigieg has promised to recruit more officers of color and tighten police discipline standards, though he balked over the phrasing of the activists’ petition demanding that the U.S. Justice Department investigate the shooting.
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