Shortest Way Home

by Pete Buttigieg

  At least I knew the Schuster/Schafer trick wouldn’t work on me. With a name like Buttigieg, I’d be hard to miss on the ballot. I figured the name might even help me. Needless to say, the Maltese vote was sparse: I knew of four total Maltese-American voters in South Bend, including my dad and myself. But an unpronounceable, ethnically ambiguous name is practically an asset in northern Indiana politics. Depending on their own background, people could assume it was Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Czech, or Belgian—all of which carried their own tribal loyalties in the area. The roster of local elected candidates around here is like a tour of Eastern Europe: Niezgodski, Zakas, Kovach, Wesolowski. For every black, German, or Irish candidate with a name like Morton, Davis, Dieter, Bauer, or O’Brien, there was a Kubsch, Kruczynski, Kostielney, or Grzegorek. Most illustrative of all was the former County Councilman Randy Przybysz, pronounced something like “sheepish” and spelled without the involvement of a single vowel.

  THE STAKES OF RUNNING FOR MAYOR of my hometown would be a lot higher than they had been in a long-shot race for a state office few had heard of. Lose once in an uphill race your first time out of the gate, and you can still impress people by running respectably. Lose twice in less than a year, and you’re probably done with politics, at least for a while. But this was home. I cared about this race even more than I had cared about Chrysler when I challenged Mourdock.

  The reason to run—the ideal reason to seek any job—was clear: the city’s needs matched what I had to offer. The city was fearful of losing its educated youth, and I was a young person who had chosen to come home and could encourage others to do the same. Its politics were mired in the struggle between two factions of the Democratic Party, each with its own candidate in the race; I belonged to no faction, and could arrive without strings attached. And as the administration struggled to generate economic growth and maintain confidence in the business community, I had a professional background in economic development and was fluent in the language of business—even while having fought and bled politically for organized labor in the auto industry. This didn’t just feel like an opportunity; it felt like a calling.

  It would come down to whether that match looked as clear to the voters as it did to me. Once again, I began to go through the motions of laying groundwork for a campaign. I enlisted Mike to organize a team, and he started recruiting local talent and colleagues from his last campaign. We got a booster of my potential run to donate some office space that he owned. I signed the paperwork to set up a new committee, and bought a couple new dress shirts. On Saturday, January 29, 2011, about a week after that Newsweek article said South Bend was dying, I officially announced that I was a candidate for mayor.

  SATURDAY MORNINGS IN JANUARY in South Bend don’t exactly invite you to leave the house, and my campaign staff of three was not sure how many people would materialize for our campaign announcement in the empty downtown storefront, next door to a small Thai restaurant, that would be our headquarters. With neither the Dvorak family nor the local party organization behind us, it was vital that we pack the room in order to show this was kicking off as a serious campaign. Luckily, the phone calls and cups of coffee over the preceding weeks had paid off. By the time I took the podium, the windows facing Main Street were fogged up with the breath of over a hundred supporters.

  Standing behind the podium in the better of the two suits I owned, I gave a speech that ran headlong into the issues surrounding the campaign. I opened by talking about that “dying cities” article, saying, “This is not an occasion for denial, it is a call to action.” I took up the age issue, too, reminding the audience that our city was founded by a thirty-three-year-old fur trader named Pierre Navarre and that the University of Notre Dame was the creation of a twenty-eight-year-old frontier priest, Father Edward Sorin. I promised to grow jobs by simplifying business process, to set up a 311 line for customer service, and to deal with the hundreds of boarded-up vacant homes in our neighborhoods. As soon as the speech was over, volunteers settled into folding chairs at plastic tables to hit the phones, and I went out to trudge up snow-covered porch steps to knock on doors, just as we had in Iowa three years earlier. This time the campaign was for the future of my hometown, and the name on the flyers and buttons was my own.

  ONE ADVANTAGE OF RUNNING for office statewide is that people generally understand you can’t be everywhere. If someone invites you to a rubber-chicken dinner in Terre Haute and you’ve already promised to be at a fish fry in Evansville, then that’s that. But in local politics, people know you’re in town. If they invite you to a chili cook-off, and you choose to go to someone else’s corn and sausage roast, they will find out whom you favored at their expense, and they will remember. And so we did our level best never to say no to an invitation or miss an event if possible, even if it meant arriving late or cutting out early to get to the next one. My record, set during Lent, was four church-hall fish fries and a Polish dinner in less than three hours—including a few minutes’ unscheduled pause to change clothes after a pierogi malfunction sent globs of cheese and cabbage onto the front of my blue shirt.

  Another feature of local politics is that there are a lot of people in charge of their particular spheres of influence, and it is important to pay them every courtesy. Some were very clear whom they were for or against. Others were more canny and subtle. James Harris Jr. presided over a shack of a liquor store in a lower-income neighborhood near campus, on land slated for a road to go through as part of a project backed by the university. A precinct chairman, he knew how everyone in his area was going to vote—with a stack of voter registration cards on the counter, he had personally registered any customer who stopped by from the neighborhood, if they weren’t voters already.

  Every once in a while I would stop in to visit and try to see how he was leaning, but Mr. Harris remained permanently cryptic. I would lean over the counter as the occasional regular came in, usually for a forty from one of his buzzing refrigerator units or a fifth of whiskey from off his plywood shelves. Under the fluorescent lights, Mr. Harris would hold court, unless his wife was minding the store for him. Getting up in years, he would look up past his glasses at me and smile a little mischievously, as if we were both in on the same joke, as I began our ritual conversation:

  “Hello, Mr. Harris, it’s good to see you.”

  “Well, I’d rather you be seeing me than viewing me.”

  “Have you thought any more about the election?”

  “Oh, yes. I like what you’re doing. I hear you saying a lot of good things.”

  “Does that mean I can count on your support?”

  “Now, I like the other guys, too, of course. All I know is, I’ve got my store, got my wife, got my house. Notre Dame says they want my store. But what they really want is the dirt. Huh? Bullshit!”

  If he was trying to get me to take a position on the upcoming road development, he never made it clear what question he was asking—or what answer he was hoping to hear. It was an infinite loop. We’d go around and around, and I never did get a clear expression of preference over whom he would back, but I’d like to think I won his vote in the end. In any case, Notre Dame must have paid handsomely for that shop with the house on top, because there’s no trace of the liquor store, and yet whenever I see him in town these days, Mr. Harris is in a very good mood.

  ORGANIZED LABOR WAS DIVIDED. Many of the rank and file appreciated my stand for auto workers during the treasurer fight, but they also felt loyal to Dvorak because of his stances in the statehouse. I courted the ones that hadn’t already promised to support him. The Sheet Metal Workers came through quickly, and the Fire Fighters signaled they were open to a conversation, so Mike and I, fresh-faced and clean-cut, went to meet them at their hall. Sitting with his fellow union officers at a big round table opposite Mike and me, Kenny Marks, the president, heard me out. A big man who was also a deacon at Mount Carmel, the fastest-growing black church in town, he leaned back in his seat and shifted between knowing glances at his fe
llow firefighters and piercing stares at us. He seemed interested but skeptical. “I like what I’m seeing, and I like what you’re saying. But how do I know you’re not just another sweet-talking devil trying to get my pants off?”

  It was hard to think of a good answer to that, so I kept on with the pitch. “I don’t know about that, but you’ll be able to hold me accountable for what we achieve from day one. . . .”

  You could never be sure, but I felt that our case was convincing—and that the groups we sat down with were responsive. Indeed, the Fire Fighters Local 362 came through with an endorsement, complete with T-shirts. Then came the Chamber of Commerce, and eventually the South Bend Tribune. It was hard to tell if any of these would be decisive, but at the very least they showed that our candidacy was serious. It was starting to feel like we had a real shot. And one day in March, as Mike and I walked out of a lunch event with Latino leaders, he looked at his phone, started grinning, and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “What? What happened?”

  “I got the poll. My friend, you’re tied.”

  Until then we had no actual research showing we could win. But we had raised enough money to do a poll, and the poll showed me and Ryan each with about thirty points, Mike Hamann in low double-digits. For reluctant supporters who said they liked me but weren’t sure I could win, this could be the tipping point.

  In the detailed demographic “cross-tabs” at the back of the book of results that came back from the pollsters, there was a curious detail: the older the voter was, the more likely he or she said it was a “positive” that I was twenty-nine years old. To this day, I wonder why. Is it that senior voters are less likely to see distinctions between twenties, thirties, and forties? Did I remind them of their children? Whatever the reason, we took the data as a reminder that you should never assume who will or won’t support you.

  Soon Dvorak released his own poll, saying he was ahead by seven. We knew we were competitive, but there was no infallible way to gauge where we stood—especially since an off-year race like this, with no federal or state elections sharing the ballot, would depend heavily not just on how residents felt, but on which campaign could turn out the most voters on Election Day. My two main rivals had been turning out voters in South Bend since I was a student; our team would have to outwork and outwit them in order to succeed.

  THE VIBRANCY OF A CAMPAIGN headquarters grows exponentially in the late weeks of a race. At first there is nothing going on but a candidate fundraising and a staff member or two—the space is quiet, almost grotesquely empty as its floor awaits tables, chairs, and volunteers. Then, imperceptibly, it begins to feel like a small community. Volunteers begin to populate the place, supporters drop off food, strangers pop in, and soon it is a hive of activity.

  Looking into the main room from the window of my small office—the “tank,” as we called it—I watched the energy of my campaign change from that of a lonely project to something resembling a movement. By mid-April there were a dozen staff members, mostly focused on organizing our volunteers. Racing to fund their paychecks, my call time intensified. Sitting across from Kathryn Roos, a talented young architect fresh off a stint in London, I ground out hour after hour of calls. Kathryn had expected to be home in South Bend only for a few weeks and was busy applying to graduate school, when a chance encounter in the soup aisle at Martin’s with our mutual high school teacher, Mrs. Chismar, led her to a different path. Nearly all careers in campaigning and politics are either long-planned or unexpected, and hers was the latter. At Mrs. Chismar’s urging, she had stopped by headquarters to introduce herself; a week later, she was the second full-time staff member of my campaign team, working as operations and finance director as the rest of the team grew around her, Mike, and me. Under her command we raised over $300,000, enough not only to pay our staff but also to launch a substantial mail and television ad campaign.

  ONE AFTERNOON AT HEADQUARTERS, I plopped down at a desk, loosened my tie, and picked up a sheaf of papers, scrutinizing them intently yet quickly, as a mayor would.

  “Okay, that was good. But this time loosen your tie a little quicker. This whole scene is only going to be three seconds in the ad.”

  Again.

  “Okay, not bad. Try to look up a little more when you’re looking at the papers.”

  Again. Then the ice-cream shop, and the living room. The spot opened with a shot of me jogging in my neighborhood, and then had all the scenes you would expect in a campaign ad: me with seniors, me with kids, me at a factory. But because this was local politics, I actually knew the seniors, the kids, and the factory—and voters would, too. I thought it was a good commercial, and had raised enough funds to put it all over television for the final days of the race. But there was no way to be sure of its effect; a second poll wasn’t in the budget.

  One evening, I was at my parents’ house for a rare family meal, when I glanced at the muted television and saw myself—the same clip of me jogging that we had used, but in black-and-white. I grabbed the remote, turned it up, and heard the dark voice-over. “What is twenty-nine-year-old Pete Buttigieg running from? Maybe it’s the facts!” The ad went on to say I lacked “the real experience for elected office.” The ad had come from the Dvorak campaign. My mother was displeased, but I was delighted; going negative on me was a clear sign that our competition was worried—and that I was now the candidate to beat.

  Back at headquarters, nervous volunteers asked how we would respond. By the standards of modern negative television advertising, it was pretty tame stuff. My campaign staff was almost gleeful that we were doing well enough to be worth attacking on television. It meant that our poll was not a fluke, though the ad might soften up our numbers if people found it convincing. But thanks to our poll, I knew what Ryan’s team didn’t: reminding people of my age would only help. Rather than respond in kind, I decided to stick to our plan, focus on the economy, and stay positive. The penalty for negative advertising, I suspected, was greater in a local race where people know each other. In a community like ours, there might even be a political upside to the high road.

  EASTER WEEKEND CAME JUST TEN DAYS before Election Day. I was sitting at a passion play at Washington High School when my campaign staffer Isaac Goldberg started looking anxiously at his phone in the seat next to me. He stepped out, then came back to his seat looking shell-shocked and whispered to me that Mike Hamann’s wife had suddenly passed away. She was traveling with family in Paraguay, and experienced a massive hemorrhage after a hike on Good Friday. So, as Easter approached and the campaign was in its final days, Mike and his family were left not only grieving but having to figure out how to get her home to the United States.

  Hundreds of us packed the funeral at Holy Cross Church on the Near West Side. As at almost every Catholic funeral in South Bend, we sang from our hymnals the haunting refrain, “Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.” People mingled after the service, exchanging words of admiration and appreciation for Mary’s life and Mike’s commitment to his family. The tragedy had achieved what might otherwise have been impossible: a gathering of hundreds of active community members, just days before the election for mayor, with not a word spoken about the ups and downs of the campaign. With the heat of campaigning cut, at least for that one day, everyone could pause and remember that this was not a fight but a competition, among people who all wanted South Bend to be a good place to live in, for us and for those we loved.

  ON EASTER MONDAY, BETTER KNOWN in South Bend as Dyngus Day, the campaign had just one week to go. It is difficult to convey to an outsider the importance of Dyngus Day, funny as it may sound. The holiday originated in Eastern Europe, where it was customary by the thirteenth century for boys to sneak into girls’ homes at dawn and douse them with water as a sign of their affection; the girls would respond by giving the boys eggs, and/or striking them with pussy willow branches. (If you think this is absurd, envision what a European historian eight hundred years from now will
think about photos of us celebrating the Resurrection of Christ by placing terrified children on the laps of man-sized Easter bunnies in late twentieth century American shopping malls.)

  There’s a lot more to the medieval East European tradition, but it’s taken on a very American life in cities with large Polish and Hungarian populations like Buffalo, Cleveland, and South Bend. The day has traditionally been marked with parties at union halls, social clubs, and bars, serving copious quantities of Polish sausage and beer. Since the early 1900s, this was also an irresistible occasion for meeting voters, and thus became a fixture on the calendar of retail politics in places like South Bend. When Bobby Kennedy came to South Bend for Dyngus Day celebrations in the spring of 1968, it helped pave the way for the first primary victory of his presidential campaign, just a month before its tragic end.

  These days, Dyngus Day for politicians begins before dawn, where we help (or attempt to help) boil sausage, noodles, and cabbage in the kitchen of the oldest and largest Polish-American establishment in town, the West Side Democratic & Civic Club. Local TV crews are there with live reports, and if the timing is right they catch the arrival of several hundred pounds of kielbasa from Jaworski’s Market. The most senior politician present, usually me or Senator Donnelly, has the honor of ceremonially signing for the sausage order.