Nearly 60 mayors across the country endorsed South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s bid for president in a USA Today op-ed on Wednesday.
Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley, who recently made headlines after the deadly shooting in her city last month, was one of the op-ed’s signatories.
The mayors, some of whom are no longer in office, cited mayoral duties and Buttigieg’s experience in South Bend as the reason for their endorsement.
“Pete has transformed South Bend, and now he is showing what American leadership can and should be in the years ahead,” the mayors wrote.
Their endorsement praised Buttigieg for putting “practical solutions over partisan ideology.”
“For mayors, politics isn’t a blood sport,” they wrote. “While inaction and gridlock are the norm in Washington, mayors don’t have the option to kick the can down the road.”
“Our residents expect electricity when they flip the switch, clean water from their taps and trash picked up regularly,” the mayors continued. “It would be unthinkable for a mayor like Pete to shut down the government because of a petty ideological disagreement.”
The endorsement concludes with the argument that as a fellow mayor, Buttigieg “understands the power of moral leadership.”
“When we cut a ribbon at a new factory, or comfort a grieving parent whose child was lost to gun violence, we are showing the people we represent that their community stands with them,” the mayors wrote. “That kind of empathetic leadership is desperately needed in the Oval Office.”
Wow. 60 huh?
There are 19,429 municipal governments in the United States.
Many small towns use the council-manager system (most counties are run this way) and those that don’t, have a weak mayor-council system. Almost all large US cities have strong mayor systems.
Towns with populations of 5,000 or less (varies between states) are not allowed to incorporate and are overseen by the county government.
So, 60 is not much of a number. Even this early, when almost nobody is granting any endorsements at that level.
Full Disclosure: I happen to like Mayor Pete a lot and hope he does well in the Primaries.
It isn’t much of a number, but if these are mostly larger city mayors, it’s not a bad thing.
The guy is making his bones with this campaign. Maybe he gets a role in a Democratic cabinet, who knows? He’s a good guy and he has to start somewhere. If he’s smart, when his campaign is over, he gets out on the stump for whomever is the Dem candidate and continues to make his bones.
If he’s the nominee, I will vote for him with relish! And a little mustard and mayo. Hold the ketchup.
I like him, but for this campaign in 2020, he’s a little too light-weight.
Two words: Mayor McCheese.
That tell-all book Officer Big Mac wrote dished some pretty greasy tales of Machiavellian corruption in the city waste-hauling business involving Hamburglar and Captain Crook.
(And don’t even get me started on the horrific murder and dismemberment of Grimace after he turned state’s evidence.)