Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 Presidential campaign ran into some trouble Friday when he returned to South Bend, Indiana following a fatal police shooting. During a local ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest, ‘Mayor Pete’ read from a prepared statement in an attempt to reassure the crowd. It did not go well though, and CNN captured a clip of him telling a potential black voter, “I’m not asking for your vote.”
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According to some in the city, Buttigieg has a history of being out of touch with local minority communities. South Bend is 40 percent black and Hispanic and his ‘1,000 houses in 1,000 days’ project didn’t sit well with many in that community. From this Buzzfeed article in April:
‘Regina Williams-Preston got into politics so that the city wouldn’t do to anyone else what the mayor’s big redevelopment plan did to her.
His program to knock down hundreds of homes in black and Latino neighborhoods like hers smacked of gentrification and ultimately cost her family several investment properties they hoped to repair but couldn’t after Williams-Preston’s husband suffered a serious illness.”
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Buttigieg was also involved in a situation when he first took office where he fired the first black police chief of the city. He has subsequently replaced them with two white police chiefs.
According to Andrew Kaczynski with CNN, the police force in South Bend has become less diverse in general beyond just the chief.
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All this adds up to the people of South Bend apparently getting fed up with the Mayor who they say has been putting his political ambitions ahead of the city.
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