Mitch Smith and Alexander Burns

<h1>SOUTH BEND, Ind. — It has been one of the biggest challenges for Pete Buttigieg since he began his improbable presidential campaign in January: Could the Harvard-educated mayor of South Bend, who often comes across like the brainy technocrat he once was as a McKinsey &amp; Co. consultant, build a following among black voters, one of the Democratic Party’s most vital constituencies?</h1>

Early signs were worrisome. Few African-Americans showed up at his campaign events, even in predominantly black areas of key primary states like South Carolina. His poll numbers among black voters were low to nonexistent. And he was shadowed by criticism from some black residents of South Bend about his firing of the city’s first black police chief and his handling of economic and housing issues.

But Buttigieg’s troubles intensified into a crisis Sunday as he faced pointed questions and angry jeers from some African-American residents of South Bend at a packed town-hall-style meeting that he held in his latest attempt to respond to the fatal police shooting last week of Eric J. Logan, a 54-year-old black man.

Though many in the crowd clapped politely for Buttigieg, the meeting was dominated by members of the audience who loudly yelled their objections to the event’s format and to the mayor’s answers. When Buttigieg talked about the city’s requirement that officers use their body cameras, someone called out, “Why haven’t you been enforcing it, then?” When the mayor defended his record of engaging residents on policing issues, another person shouted, “We don’t trust you.”

At a few points Buttigieg asked the audience for quiet and to stop interrupting him. He listened to complaints about a pattern of police mistreatment of black people. He admitted failures. He promised to do better. But at the same time, there was little of the soothing emotional empathy that politicians strive to deliver in such moments.

“There’s a lot beneath the surface when it comes to trust and legitimacy around policing and race in our city,” said Buttigieg, who was seated on a stage next to the police chief, Scott Ruszkowski.

With Buttigieg just days away from his first Democratic presidential debate, Thursday night, his difficulty quelling the frustrations and concerns among black residents here threatens to upend his well-crafted pitch about South Bend’s rebuilt downtown and overall economic strides.

“A lot of tension in the air right now — you can cut it with a knife,” Blu Casey, a South Bend activist who attended the meeting, said in an interview. As for the mayor? “He’s doing bad within the black community right now,” Casey said.

Buttigieg openly conceded Sunday that his efforts to recruit a more diverse police force had failed, a remarkable admission that his rivals for the nomination are sure to bring up should they need a line of attack against him. He also voiced his disappointment that a body camera, which the city bought to great fanfare and which the officer was wearing when he fatally shot Logan, had not been turned on, leaving unanswered questions about the episode.

He told the audience that he would ask for a federal investigation of the shooting and for a special prosecutor to be appointed. Protesters have requested that an outside agency review the case, but the St. Joseph County prosecutor has so far declined to request a special prosecutor.

Buttigieg’s apparent difficulty to soothe a crisis at home strikes at several raw points for his presidential campaign. His soaring ascent in the race has been propelled overwhelmingly by the enthusiasm of white voters, and especially college-educated whites — including some of the Democratic Party’s wealthiest political benefactors. He has repeatedly acknowledged that he is struggling to connect not just with black voters but also other minority groups that are pillars of the Democratic Party’s national coalition.

No candidate in recent years has won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, or even advanced far in the nominating process, without substantial support from African-Americans.

But it is not only black voters, like Buttigieg’s constituents in South Bend, who may regard the latest developments there as unsettling for his candidacy. White liberals have also grown intensely concerned in recent years with matters of racism and social justice, and they, too, may be watching Buttigieg’s handling of events in his city with a judgmental eye.

Up to this point, he has cultivated an unflappable political persona, defined by his cool intellect and seeming immunity to criticism or provocation from his critics. While his campaign carries the romantic theme of bridging a new political era, in person Buttigieg offers a results-over-emotion ethos informed by his career as a McKinsey consultant that is far from Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” mantra. During a tour of Mason City, Iowa, this month, Buttigieg spoke with the local mayor about macro-level municipal concerns such as downtown development and river cleanup, but spent comparatively little time with local residents talking about their concerns.

And at the town-hall-style meeting Sunday, he was serious and solemn throughout — never losing his cool, but also never wearing emotions on his sleeve. Buttigieg sat behind a small desk on a stage in a vast high school auditorium, looking out on the crowd of city residents, listening intently and rarely raising his voice. The only other two people on stage were the police chief, who sat next to the mayor, and a local NAACP leader, who stood several feet away and whose attempts to maintain order were mostly unsuccessful.

Oliver Davis, a black member of the South Bend City Council who has been a sharp critic of Buttigieg on policing matters, paused a long time during a telephone interview Sunday when asked if the mayor showed empathy.

“If he cries and sheds tears, then people say he’s weak,” he said. “If he doesn’t shed a tear, people say he’s cold. If he gets angry, people say he’s out of control. If he has a flat face and doesn’t say anything, people say he doesn’t feel our pain.”

Davis said he admired the mayor for wading into a crowd of protesters and Logan’s grieving relatives Friday night. “Very few people could have withstood what he went through without completely losing it,” he said.

Buttigieg’s record in South Bend has played a modest role in his candidacy so far; he has tended to campaign not on his granular achievements in public office but rather on sweeping thematic arguments about political reform and national renewal.

An initial round of scrutiny by the news media directed at his mayoral record in the spring — a number of news organizations, including The New York Times, examined his policies on policing, housing, economic development and more — did nothing to temper Democratic voters’ interest in that message. Voters and donors in the party have continued to embrace him, with steadily growing enthusiasm, more as a brainy spokesman for generational change than as a city executive with a complex portfolio of policies in his political résumé.

But now, the most challenging elements of governing a small, racially divided Midwestern city are no longer likely to be confined to the distant background of Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. And for the first time, voters well beyond South Bend may begin to assess Buttigieg not as a theoretical leader — a man that many can plainly imagine speaking with strength and sophistication from the Oval Office — but as an actual leader, straining in real time to address one of the most significant crises of his career.

And in that emotionally charged context, Buttigieg’s political identity is facing its most trying test so far, as the steely, cerebral manner that has made him a sensation on the campaign trail collides with a moment of mourning and anger in the city that has twice charged him with administering its government.

Few details are known about the shooting of Logan by Sgt. Ryan O’Neill, a 19-year veteran of the South Bend police. Officers had been called around 3:30 a.m. last Sunday to an apartment building near downtown to investigate a person going through cars. Investigators said O’Neill found Logan partially inside a vehicle, and that Logan then approached the officer with a knife raised. O’Neill, who was wearing a body camera but had not turned it on, then shot him.

South Bend’s tumult grew early Sunday when a mass shooting unfolded outside a bar. Eleven people were struck by gunfire, and one man died. The conditions of the 10 surviving victims had been stabilized by midday, officials said.

Lwan Easton, an African-American resident of South Bend who attended the meeting Sunday, said he was generally pleased with Buttigieg’s performance as mayor. But while parts of the city have indeed improved, Easton said the mayor had struggled connecting with black people and “needs to step up his game with community interaction.”

“This is a defining moment for him,” Easton said. “I believe that he can probably figure this out.”

Toward the end of the meeting, Verma Blackman, an African-American resident, spoke about her questions about Logan’s death, about how he was transported to the hospital in a police car rather than an ambulance, about her frustration that the body camera her tax money helped buy was not turned on. And she told the mayor that her young grandson was scared of his city’s police officers.

“I’m doing everything I know how to fix it,” Buttigieg told her.

As she left the high school, Blackman said she was pleased with the mayor’s response.

“I’m a big fan of Mayor Pete: He answered it and didn’t tiptoe around it,” Blackman said. “That’s what I wanted: I wanted him to respond to our cries. Because we’re crying.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/us/politics/buttigieg-south-bend-shooting.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Shooting Fuels Racial Tensions and Puts Buttigieg in Hot Seat

Early signs were worrisome. Few African-Americans showed up at his campaign events, even in predominantly black areas of key primary states like South Carolina.

Shooting fuels racial tensions and puts Buttigieg in hot seat

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Mitch Smith and Alexander Burns

Articles written by the author

Shooting fuels racial tensions and puts Buttigieg in hot seat