How a data geek learned to rule with heart

April 29, 2019, 08:27 UTC

By Alex Seitz-Wald and Adam Edelman

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – After Pete Buttigieg's mayor's eight years, it's hard to say what has changed the most – he or the city he's heading.

When he was elected in 2011, Buttigieg was a 29 year-old consultant, McKinsey, based in Oxford. By the time he announced his candidacy for the presidency this month, he had gone out gay, had done a tour of duty in Afghanistan and had been married, like many millennia in his thirties.

But more importantly, he had become a better mayor.

NBC News interviewed Buttigieg and more than 40 politicians, activists, law enforcement officials, real estate developers, voters, businesspeople, clergy, community leaders and academics from South Bend for better understand the evolution of the candidate who upset the race for the presidency. .

Those who know him and have worked with him say that Buttigieg, now 37, has come to office thinking of himself as a committed consultant, full of great ideas and piles of numbers and studies. to transform the city. With data-based plans, such as those for "smart" sewers and "smart streets", he began to wake up a city that had resigned to its slow demise.

But gaps in his experience, especially with people outside his rarefied world, have become more and more obvious. Even the best education in the world could not prepare the only son of two teachers for the harsh reality of the work of managing a diverse municipality.

Yet, as even his most ferocious critics admit, he listened, learned and shifted to action, as he became more personally confident and acknowledged the kind of shortcomings that politicians often try to to hide.

He abandoned the suit jacket in favor of his current rolled-up uniform and began to establish a human connection with his constituents after a "moment aha" face to face with the mother of a young murder victim.

"I'm really treated as a management job," Buttigieg told NBC News in an interview. "I came – somehow reluctantly – to realize that the management part of the job might be the bottom half."

Brash, data driven, in a hurry

After Buttigieg emerged victorious from a clumsy Democratic primary and then defeated his Republican opponent, the promise and pitfalls of being the new mayor of South Bend arose almost immediately after his installation in his office located on the 14th floor of the County City Building, in a snowy environment. Day in 2012.

Good things started to happen right away. Buttigieg undertook to reshape the squeaky bureaucracy of 1,400 people and to attract new amenities in a city (100,000 people) with a silhouette dominated by a building whose penthouse once housed a club reserved for posh members, but which had fallen in despair for a long time.

"The city had the reputation of telling you why you could not do anything," said Jeff Rae, president of the South Bend House and former Republican Mayor of neighboring Mishawaka. "It has changed:" How can we conclude this agreement? "

Some $ 200 million of investment has been invested in the downtown area and new condos, offices, parks, restaurants and cafes have been created.

There was a new minor baseball stadium and a farm team for the Chicago Cubs. A casino A public lighting on the river. New streets – "smart" streets – have been redefined as two-way roads with slower speed limits to help keep people in the city and boost retailing. Under the streets were "smart" sewers using electronic sensor technology to prevent overflow into the river.

A new warehouse and a logistics park near the airport have created jobs, while the former Studebaker factory, the epicenter of South Bend's decline after its closure in 1963, has become a hub for data processing companies seeking to exploit nearby fiber optic lines. railways.

"He was a dynamic young leader with a young and dynamic team in place," said Tim Scott, president of the South Bend Common Council. "His team was just aggressive and proactive, analyzing data and new urbanism, the latest and greatest trends in technology, investing in communities."

The prosperity that has spread in the city center has however never reached the low-income neighborhoods of the city. A study commissioned by the city in 2017 found that, despite the widespread decline in unemployment in the city, the unemployment rate of African Americans was still almost twice as high as that of white residents and that 40% of the community black city still lived in poverty. .

And a legacy scandal – and Buttigieg's botched response – revealed a racial divide in the city that would haunt his success.

Just weeks after taking office, he learned that the first black police chief in the city, appointed by a predecessor, was the subject of a federal investigation for allowing a detective to register. in secret phone calls inside the police station in order to denounce racism disproportionately. white force.

This appeared to violate federal wiretapping laws, so Buttigieg demoted the well-known leader, Darryl Boykins, to the position of captain.

But as many African Americans have found, a black leader was dismissed for attempting to fight racism. "It was important for the African-American community to see people in such positions," said Hardie Blake, a black pastor. "With Boykins, it definitely created distance."

Buttigieg thought like a consultant – solving the problem by hiring as a new leader a white outsider in Boston – originally from Boston – who had a reputation for developing data-driven policing strategies. The mayor did not think of himself as a politician with a human touch.

In interviews with NBC News, municipal leaders and residents assessed "Mayor Pete" in the following terms: he was young. Lack of management experience and diverse staff. Too data-driven, too hurried His administration was impetuous and did not communicate effectively with the main actors. Decision-making was confined to a small group; by the time the problems appeared, it was often too late.

These weaknesses were accentuated with the Buttigieg project to destroy or rehabilitate 1,000 vacant dwellings in as many days not respected. They were concentrated in poor and minority neighborhoods.

All residents of South Bend agreed that, like many post-industrial cities, the problem of abandoned housing was real, but many questioned how the Buttigieg administration treated it. In particular, leaders and residents of the largely-targeted western neighborhoods reported that Buttigieg acted too fast and gave priority to the data upon which the plan was based.

"Part of its data-driven approach and the ambitious timelines it set, meant that when things went wrong, they often hurt before things could be repaired," he said. said Nate Levin-Aspenson, a South Bend activist indivisible local chapter, progressive national group. "It's a bit like taking a data-driven approach – your data and algorithms always reflect the biases of the people who create them."

James Mueller, a friend of Buttigieg in high school who was his chief of staff and who is now running for Buttigieg's succession to succeed him at the mayoralty of the November election, acknowledged that the learning curve was abrupt.

"Of course, twenty years or so think that they know more than they know, and he has not been immune to it at different times in his life," he says. Mueller said. "I would say we've all grown up for 29 years."

The "moment aha"

Buttigieg, a so-called introvert, discovered that one of the most difficult aspects of the job was standing up and receiving cheering and polite applause.

But when an 18-year-old African-American was shot dead while he was sitting on his porch near Buttigieg's childhood home, northwest of the city, the mayor went to talk to the mother of the victim.

"I had no relevant skills in this situation, nothing from my McKinsey training or from my university studies would be helpful here," Buttigieg wrote in his memoir: "The World's Shortest Way: Challenge to the Future." a single mayor and model for the future of America ".

"What mattered to him was that I introduced myself," he continued. "Unlike the time I was a student or consultant, the value was not in the intelligence of what I had to say, but simply in the fact that I am there. "

Isaac Hunt, who leads a crime-reduction effort called the group intervention against violence that Buttigieg brought to South Bend, called it "aha moment."

"You can see it in the face," said Hunt, remembering how Buttigieg had behaved after meeting with the victim's mother. "I think it was the first time he saw something like that, and it was like:" Wow, I did not know. "

"From then on, I saw it work differently," Hunt added.

In the months and years to come, Buttigieg will learn to listen carefully to how its decisions affect its constituents and will eventually address their concerns through a renewed approach that relies more on personal experiences and stories than on data.

He began to try to better communicate with the city 's minority community, striving to listen and understand how his "1,000 Housing" and Downtown Revitalization initiatives are taking place. did not like low-income neighborhoods.

"You have to give credit to an administration that is reacting," said Regina Williams-Preston, a member of the Common Council who criticized Buttigieg. "There is reason to celebrate how we have progressed in this process and deepen our relationship with each other by allowing us to tackle these issues, because we often do not want to talk about them."

Buttigieg also began to meet the Latino leaders of the city quarterly and respond to their concerns.

He made sure that the new 311 phone line for city services had Spanish speaking operators, and to help undocumented immigrants oversee the creation of a "map" program. community resident ". Funded privately by a local Latin American advocacy group and authorized by a mayor's decree, the program provided migrants with a semi-official identity card that they could use to pay bills for the day. Water, get library cards, open bank accounts and make orders without fear that their names would eventually be handed over to the immigration authorities.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg himself was changing.

In 2014, he deployed to Afghanistan for six months with the Navy Reserve. Stripped of his power and his sophisticated diplomas, which had little value in a war zone, Buttigieg – who went to a private high school then to Harvard – came close to American compatriots from all walks of life.

"When you are in a very intellectual environment all your life, you are really smart, you go to very good schools, there may be a little understanding of everyday life that you might not have," he said. Judith Fox, a Lady Law Clinic, a teacher who has known Buttigieg's parents for years. "But when you work in the army with other soldiers, the reality of other people's lives hits you in a more concrete way."

And as he considered his own mortality, he realized that he had to be true to his sexuality – "to reconcile my professional life with the fact that I'm gay," he wrote in his memoir.

And he reconciled: he came home in September, announced his reelection campaign in November, appeared gay in a column of the South Bend Tribune next June, met his future husband, Chasten Glezman, in August, and a – election with more than 80% of the votes three months later. Buttigieg and Glezmen were married last summer.

"He already had the audacity, but when you have the experience to reinforce your audacity, you have complete confidence," said Kathy Schuth, executive director of Near Northwest Neighborhood, a neighborhood development agency. non-profit. "In his second term, I think he's found his place."

The interview: lessons learned

A person who agrees that the mayor grew up at work is the mayor himself.

"They say you become more stubborn with age, but the experience has taught me to be more open minded and to understand better," Buttigieg told NBC News. "Often, when I was certain to have the right answer in a given situation, I learned to be a little more humble about it."

The situation in the Boykins case, he recalled his demotion of the chief of police, taught him the importance of a single decision.

"When it hit my office, I thought about it strictly to make sure that I do what is right and make the least negative result happen. I was hoping that the more I explained it, the more people would understand – and in fact, the opposite was true, "he said." You can answer that by being crazy or you can answer that by asking yourself why ? "

On the 1000-day 1,000-day project, which received a lot of criticism, he said he would have relied more on community feedback and less on plans and analysis.

"I have never listened to nor engaged the community," he admitted. "I thought I was doing a good job, but in retrospect, I know you can not have too much."

Buttigieg is a delegator by nature, so some aspects of government-run management did not come naturally.

His style is in many ways the opposite of that of another presidential candidate, Senator Cory Booker, DN.J., who, as mayor of Newark, was known to have personally reacted to the tweets concerning the roads not cleared by showing with a snow shovel and digging in.

For Buttigieg, it is an inefficient use of the time of a leader.

"From time to time, it can be interesting to practice, and I do it sometimes," he said, adding that he had gone to fill the potholes with a crew on the road and offering three compelling reasons why: work; to better understand their work; and to be considered engaged in the matter.

"But it's not like I have to be a major point of contact to fill the potholes," he said. "What you need to do in a very high-level job is doing things that only you can do."

He recalled what the troops said in Afghanistan: "You never want a colonel to be caught off guard by a lieutenant."

He nevertheless understood that voters wanted direct contact with their elected officials. Buttigieg has begun organizing "Mayor's Night" events where residents can have a few minutes in-person with the Mayor and other city officials to voice their grievances.

Last month, when an armed man killed 50 people in two New Zealand mosques, Buttigieg received a call from a local Islamic leader asking for increased police presence during Friday prayers.

"I would have probably reacted differently if it had happened the first year," he said in an interview. "I would have taken care of what he asked and thought my job was done."

"But part of what he asked, without asking, was a kind of reassurance that the Islamic community was safe," Buttigieg added.

So after hanging up the phone, Buttigieg wrote a letter to the Islamic community, saying, "I want you to know that this whole city has his arms around you, in love and peace, and that we support you in practicing your faith here, in this community, our community, this house we share. "

He tweeted it, the letter became viral and the people of South Bend and around the world cited it as a perfect example of understanding and leadership.

"I've heard a lot more about this letter than about the extra police car," Buttigieg said.