South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg
U.S. Conference of Mayors
Washington, DC
January 24, 2019

Good afternoon.  First I just want to thank you for the opportunity to address this session.  I want to thank President Benjamin, along with Mayors Barnett and Fischer for their leadership and Tom Cochran and the fantastic staff of this conference.  Entering my eighth and last year as mayork it's been a tremendous privilege to be part of this body dealing with issues from water infrastructure to immigration, and I've especially valued the chance to serve on the advisory board, as chair of the automation task force, which I should plug is convening later on this afternoon.  And more than anything, my husband Chasten and I cherish the friendships that we made among the fellow mayors, spouses and others who are here.

I think the circumstances around us, in Washington, only serve to amplify the importance of this conference. this community of American mayors.  Can you imagine what would happen if one of us ever shut down a city because of a policy disagreement?  Civilization would break down in a matter of hours, because we deliver water, we pick up the trash.  They would run us out of town on a rail, so we do not let it happen.

Mayors are different.  Where else can you walk into a national gathering of Democratic and Republican elected officials who care about the same priorities and actually like each other.

Mayors accept accountability for what happens in our cities, even when it means that we have to manage things that we don't own or own things that we don't control.  And we work across the aisle, not by pretending to be something we're not ideologically, not watering down our values, but engaging people in good faith, who understand the stakes.

And I believe we need more of that here in Washington.  Which brings me to the fact that yesterday, I launched an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States.

Let me acknowledge that I understand the audacity of running for president at my age, especially because sometimes downstairs I'll still get carded when I order a beer.

But the truth is it's audacious for anyone, any mortal of any age to think that they could possibly belong in that office.  And yet every one of our 45 presidents has been just that.  And right now I believe the time has come for a new generation of leadership to come forward at the highest levels.

So we announced this yesterday.  The response the last 24 hours has been overwhelming.  It has been positive.  People have contributed from every state, and we've had encouragement from every corner.

We did hear some skepticism about the idea of a mayor going straight into the national arena.

Some people even said, you ought to run for Congress first.

I mean no disrespect to the United States Congress.  But that is a very different job and I would argue that our country right now would be a better place if Congress looked more like the community of American mayors and not the other way around.

Are we really so sure that serving in that legislative body, crucially important though it is, is more weighty and more demanding and more relevant today than the experience of leading a city of any size as it faces its biggest opportunities and challenges?  I doubt that.  Because we cannot keep doing what we've been doing, especially in Washington.  We need something completely different.  And that just might mean sending a mayor to the White House.

Many of you have heard me tell the story of South Bend, a diverse and largely low income city that struggled for decades to recover from the destruction of the local auto industry in the 1960s.  We saw times so tough that the national press called us dying as recently as 2011, the month I got into the race for mayor.

But today, our city is known for changing our trajectory as we dealt with vacant and abandoned houses, created thousands of new jobs in industries that didn't even exist when the last Studebaker rolled off the line in South Bend.  We grew our population and came to believe in our city's future again. 

Mayors understand what's at stake in our work.  It's not a show for us.  We know the accountability, the immediacy of the everyday.  Because we live in our cities.  We eat what we cook.  And we never forget why all of this, why politics itself, matters.  When you're in charge of everything from water infrastructure to police protection, you never forget the stakes.

A mayor, like a president, has to do three things.  To capably run an administration, to pass and implement good policies, and most importantly, and most missing right now at the national level, to call people to their highest values in times of stress and division.

Every mayor has had that moment when you realize more than any initiative more than any policy, you realize as a walking symbol of your community, you have the responsibility to hold people together and to elevate their spirit.

This is a season for local leadership in our national life.  Most of the country's most urgent issues— racial justice, immigration, infrastructure—they're playing out primarily at the local level.  All politics is local, especially national politics. 

And all politics is personal.  And that is especially true for my generation.  The more you're concerned about what your life will be like in 2054, which is when I will reach the current age of the current president, the more you have at stake in the decisions made in 2020.  That's why it's time for a new approach and a new vocabulary.

So to everyone who says that my side of the aisle doesn't know how to put what we believe on a bumper sticker, I would answer this:

Freedom, security, democracy.  That'll fit.

Freedom I believe ought to be the organizing principle for all of our domestic policy.  But leaders on my side of the aisle have relinquished the language of freedom to the right.  Conservatives care deeply about freedom, but their attention is usually limited to freedom from government.  Mayors already know that there's more to freedom than freedom from, because you don't enjoy freedom to live a life of your choosing if can't get your trash picked up.  You're not free to focus on entrepreneurship or family or faith or whatever things matter most in your life if you've got to get up in the morning and worry about how you're going to get clean, safe drinking water that doesn't poison your family.

And that's true at the national level too.

You are not free if you cannot sue a financial institution that gets caught ripping you off.

You are not free if you can't start a small business because you're afraid of losing your health care, or if you can't make your own healthcare decisions at all.

Or if you can't marry the person you love because a county clerk is imposing their interpretation of their religion on you.

That's freedom.

Democracy.  I believe the future of our democracy has been called into question.  Is our democratic republic even democratic anymore?

As we speak, workers and parents and children right here in the District of Columbia, Columbia are denied full representation in the House and Senate.  That is not democracy.

It's not democracy when districts are drawn so politicians get to pick their voters instead of the other way around.

Cities are a lot more democratic because they don't redraw city limits every 10 years.  Maybe some mayors wish that we could.  I won't speak to whether that's about drawing people in or drawing people out.

But it's an authentic community of interest ,maybe the last level of American governments functioning right now as a democracy.  Nationally, it is not a democracy if dollars can outvote people or if citizens are blocked from exercising their legitimate right to vote.  So many great Americans fought for democracy overseas, we have to be willing to defend it right here at home.

And speaking of things we haven't been comfortable talking about on my side of the aisle, the third: security.  My party's got to do a better job explaining our commitment to security.  Every mayor already knows there's a lot more to safety and security than fences and guns.

I know a thing or two about that.  When I was doing vehicle movements in Afghanistan, what kept me safe wasn't just the armor on my vehicle or on my body or the M4 or the M9.  It was also trust— trust among people who got in my vehicle and did not care if I was a Republican or a Democrat, or what country my father immigrated from, or whether I was going home to a boyfriend or girlfriend.

They just cared if I knew how to do my job.

And there was something else that kept us safe.  The flag we had stitched to our shoulder represented a country that kept its word, and our allies knew it, and our enemies knew it, and that too helped keep us safe.

Security starts at home.  When I think about security, I think about life in South Bend, Indiana.  I think about the floods that put people out of their homes twice in two years.  First a 1000-year rainfall, then the next year a 500-year river flood.  Do the math.

Either I have the most ridiculous statistical luck of any mayor, or the climate is changing, and 21st century security means dealing with climate threats too.   

It means making sure someone with a history of violence can't get a firearm in the first place, let alone bring it anywhere near your child's school.

And it means dealing with attacks on our precious democracy, our election system, attacks that are underway as we speak, from hostile foreign powers.

Yes, military security, border security, but also climate security, election security, domestic security, cyber security.  It is 2019, and there is a lot more to keeping us safe than building a wall.

Lastly, I'm exploring this run because we have been told to look for greatness in all the wrong places.  We will not find greatness in the past.  Trying to dredge it up from some impossible again.  There's no again in the real world; there's no going back.

Conservatives cannot go back to the 1950s and Democrats cannot go back to the 1990s.

[audience member interjects something]

As every mayor knows.  Thank you.  As every mayor knows, there is only the future and our responsibility to make it better than what came before.

And I know there is a future for American greatness.  It's something I believe in; it's something I put my life on the line to defend.  And greatness begins at home.  It plays out in the everyday lives and everyday experiences of the people we serve every day.  In our communities, not in the television studios or in the Capitol building, but in our homes and our families and our neighborhoods, that is where we find and build up the real greatness of America.

So we're looking at doing something that has not been done before.

And I get that I am not like the others.  But I think that might be a good thing.  And, knowing what the community of American mayors means, I hope that we can work together every step of the way.  Thank you.