- [announcer] funding for overhead with evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by claire and carl stuart. and by claire and carl stuart. - i'm evan smith, he's the mayor of south bend indiana, one of the youngest chief executives of a city with 100,000 residents in the united states, and a much buzzed about democrat who many see as a leader of his party and the country in the years to come. he's pete buttigieg, this is overheard. (bright instrumental music) let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is it about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa and-- and you could say that he'd made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it, you saw a problem and over time took it on and-- let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. (laughing) this is overheard. (applauding)

(applauding) mr mayor, welcome. - thanks. - nice to see you, so you've been in your current job for a little more than six years. - that's right. - right? going on seven years. is it everything you thought it would be? - (laughing) and more. - and more. - i'm not sure anying can ite preparyou for being mayor of your home town. i mean you're working with everything from the sorta thing that you seeon- - good referce, by the way,hat's good. i immediately know what you're talking about. - well it is about local government indiana. - right. - some ds it feels more like the wire. haven't had a lotta west wing days, it's uslly either parks and rec or the wire or maybe the veep kinda feel of things. - you crammed a lot into that one sentence (muttering). but the fact that it is your hometown as opposed to just a random city in a random place, it's different. - yeah of course. i mean especially a community that's been through what we've been through, you know, this is a city people know us often because they know about notre dame but we're really an industrial city and one that was brought to its knees en our biggest employer studebaker collapsed in the 1960s and so-- - right, still coming back.

- in many ways yeah, i mean we've had colossal ups and downs, we lost about 1/4 of our population. we were declared a dying city by newsweek. - in fact right before you got elected. - it was the week i officially got into the race i think. - right newsweek put south bend on the list of america's dying cities and you're thinking why couldn't i have picked another profession? - no, actually to me that was a rallying cry. instead of trying to wish it away i talked about it every day i was campaigning saying hey, this is a kick in the pants, this is a wake up call. what are we going to do about this? and six years later, we're growing at the fastest pace we have in more than 1/4 of a century so good things are happening in the city but when you grow up there and especially having grown up not really realizing that abandoned factories or empty houses were unusual, i mean i didn't know that every city didn't have that. - that was the normal. - sure, i mean that was just part of the furniture when i was growing up. so to be able to shape a town now that you grew up in, that you care about and be part of its comeback is amazing. - i'm interested in this idea of how you bring a city back because it's hard and we know a number of instances

of big cities around the country that have struggled for various reason, i'm thinking of detroit and oakland as two examples, but we could probably name 20 examples. what sort of thought process you go through, what are the strategies what are the tactics? how do you start back at the beginning and think here's the to-do list? what did you do? - well what you don't do is have it all figured out in advance. i remember when i took office people were saying what industry are we gonna hitch our wagon to? are we gonna be the nanotech city or the biotech city? and i very quickly realized that clusters of economic growth don't happen because a local government official decided that they would. they happen because you create the right kind of conditions. when people ask me, you know, are you gonna be a high tech advanced city or are you gonna be focusing on manufacturing, to me that's a false premise and a false choice. - how's that? - for example, we just finished up a contract at am general, one of our manufacturers, they make hmmwvs. they're also making, or they were making mercedes vehicles, an r class, an suv that sold to the chinese market. so you got american union autoworkers

making a german car going to chinese customers, they're sending their goods to asia, not their jobs. that contract wrapped up and now we're gonna retool that same facility, it's gonna be making electric vehicles for a silicon valley based firm that's backed by chinese investment. point is, there are absolutely ways that workers can play a role in a globalized automated world, and i don't mean the role of victim, i mean really play a role that they can succeed. we gotta find those cases, tell those stories and let people know there's nothing to be afraid of. even as we take all of the displacement and all of the disruption seriously and recognize the impact that it's had on working families for the last half century. - now as a mayor trying to bring a city back, but even as a mayor not trying to bring a city back, but just to attract business and i'm conscious of the bidding war going on now for the second amazon headquarters. - right. - often you have to do things to attract business, you've got to offer economic incentives, you've got to put lots of baubles and beads on, so are you in any position economically to be in competition for, if not amazon, for some of the kinds of economic development opportunities,

that like-sized cities are chasing? - we can be yeah. now we use economic development incentives especially when things are close and we think it could put us over the top or break a tie. but i also think it's important for local and state leaders to realize you can't succeed by trying to buy jobs. you know companies are made of people and the leaders of those companies are gonna use their judgment to figure out what kind of community they wanna be in. by the time i have the chance to try to pitch some ceo on why they oughta expand in south bend, they've done the math, they know the cost of land, labor, utilities, taxes, all that. - is it relatively cheap to be there? - we're very competitive, yeah, all those dimensions. - i like how you changed my cheap to competitive, that was... (laughing) nice pivot mayor. - if you're a low income family trying to get housing in south bend, it doesn't feel cheap. even though by the standards of one of the coasts or even austin, it probably would come off that way. - yeah but the reality is, if a company's looking to relocate they understand that it's an affordable, maybe that's a good word, an affordable place to relocate employees and families. no doubt the schools are good,

that that's an attractive part of this. - we've got some challenges in the schools but it's one of the most important things that people look at. - yeah. - i guess that's my point. they've already done the math about the taxes and all that stuff, by the time they're talking to me, they wanna know if this is the kind of place where they and their colleagues would wanna move, and the kinda place that has the workforce that can take the jobs they're gonna grow into. you know one thing that is really frustrating is to hear about a lot of open jobs when you know there are people looking for jobs and they haven't matched up. so we've gotta establish the quality of place and that's everything from hard infrastructure, we've redone our streetscape to make it more friendly to make sure that pedestrians and bicycles can coexist with cars in a complete street strategy. but also what you might call some of the softer things, just making sure there's enough breweries, making sure that people know that whatever their ethnic background or sexual orientation they're gonna be made to feel comfortable in our city. - welcomed in your community. - absolutely, that all adds up and it's just as important as tax incentives or economic policy. - now a lot of big cities, as you know, mr mayor, big cities are in a traditional sense, blue.

- yeah. - blue cities. new york and los angeles are blue cities, chicago is a blue city, here in the state of texas as we said today, the biggest cities, houston, dallas, san antonio, austin, are all represented by non partisan mayors but they're all democrats, nobody's surprised about that, and the cities themselves are blue outposts in what is a red state. indiana is a conservative state. - it is. - how is south bend? - you know we're a relatively democratic city. our county went about 50/50. - relatively? - yeah, maybe not quite as much as austin but you know it's a different kind of democrat though. you know it's a blue collar tradition, tends to be a little more socially conservative. - and you're getting exactly where i was going with this. so the nature of the politics, and therefore the nature of the people there also probably is a factor in how you approach the city going forward. - yeah, very much so i mean you gotta develop in a way that's true to who we are as a community and at the same time sometimes you're tugging on people to come a little further forward, and that's ok, i mean that's the give and take in politics. but we have similar challenges you know, a very conservative state, i mean mike pence was our governor after all. - indeed.

- and so a lot of us mayors were coming together trying to make sure that a social conservative agenda under governor pence didn't embarrass us or make us look like we were anti-growth or anti-future. - one of the interesting things about you as i see it is you as a mayor alongside other mayors have realized that you have more power to take control of issues that once were the province of states or the country. and climate is, of course, your brand. - it's extraordinary, and climate is such a great example because who could think of a more global issue than climate? right people think climate is a hugely, and yet it's profoundly local. the impact is local, whether we're talking about dealing with extreme weather events that we've had in south bend or the questions around whether climate played a role in something like harvey. the receiving end of it is local for sure. but also the chance to do something about it is local. and our take is that if federal government is unable or unwilling to deal with this, that doesn't mean we just stop and wait for them, whether it's climate or we just did paid parental leave in south bend. all i could do, my hands are tied for doing it for the community so i just did it for city employees

and then i'm urging other employers in the area-- - public employees and then you're going to the privates and saying would you-- - yeah exactly we're saying why don't you come along and do the same thing. so you're gonna see all kinds of leadership either by example or by policy from cities that are no longer even waiting for our state or national government to catch up. because we can't afford to wait. when you're a mayor, you can't, and one thing you'll never see is a city government shut down over party politics because we deliver water, and you need water to live. if the water didn't run for 24 hours, society would break down, so we know that we gotta solve problems and get stuff done. and i wish we could figure out a way to make state and national politics look a little more like the local level. - well the fact is, there is something refreshing about direct democracy in the sense that if you're the mayor and things don't go well, they come to your house. - they do, they find you-- - right? they find you. - at the grocery, they find you at the gym. - and it's a lot harder to go to the governor's mansion and penetrate security or to go to the white house. but you go to the mayor's house. - no and that's true at every level. i'm always telling students, you know, i just testified in congress for the first time in my career, and it took six years in office

before i had that chance, it was on an obscure wastewater issue, but to testify in congress, you actually have to be invited. to testify in our city council meetings, you just show up. and i've seen votes go differently because people, some of them not even old enough to vote had decided to involve themselves in that way. so it's a very healthy thing. i go out to a school or a neighborhood center a few times a year and we do a mayor's night out event where anybody that wants to can just sit down with me on their mind. - and how helpful is that for you, there are some voters who understandably are cynical about politics and about politicians and they think he's only doing this for show, he's not actually gonna listen, and he's not actually gonna change his mind. he already had his conclusion about an issue before we met, this is essentially just checking a box. - now the truth is sometimes it does change my mind. and people can tell based on the results. this is the other great thing about the local level. there's no alternative facts, if there's a hole in the road and i failed to fill it in, you can tell. and if we paved it, you can tell. it's not like proving i wasn't born in kenya, you can tell what's going on in your city, right?

i've got a pac right now called hitting home which is trying to do state and national politics in the same way, making it all about specific stories that people can tell about their own lives because it's very hard to lie to somebody about what's going on in their life. local politics, all day is that way. so even when somebody's beating me up, it's usually over something that's actually true and we just disagree about how to deal with it. - i wanted to stay on climate for one second before we move on so you're, again, my memory of the earliest mayors to get in the space are two mayors who are no longer in office, annise parker in houston was a big one and michael nutter in philadelphia was a big one. but those are very democratic cities. as you say, your city is pretty much 50/50. do you have any pushback from the people who you represent about why are you playing in climate? maybe climate's not actually a thing and-- - oh yeah i get-- - 'cause as you know, this is a very controversial issue, one of many. but you've chosen to associate yourself with something that's not exactly, in the eyes of some people, apple pie, motherhood. - yeah, i know, i get some stuff on twitter, i get people saying, especially when you have a weather event and you're saying

hey this is an example of why we've gotta deal with climate. and then you've got some folks saying well you can't do that, this is the wrong time to do that. - yeah. - to me that is the worst form of political correctness. when something bad happens and you're not allowed to talk about what might've contributed to it. so you just stick up, but i can also tell a story about climate in a place like south bend where, again, we're getting into the business of making electric vehicles. one of our very traditional manufacturers in the sheet metal industry, one of their better customers now is in solar, so this is something where we can benefit. in addition to the fact that we're very much heard. you know you don't have to be a coastal city or a polar city to be impacted by climate. as we saw recently with 1000 year rainfall we had last year that i'm afraid probably isn't an 1000 year rainfall anymore. but when you get to that concrete level, again, it becomes a little less about ideology, a little less about party, and a little more about hey, here's a problem, here's how we're gonna have to solve it. are you with me? and we can have adult conversations about that, at least at the local level. - are you able to have an adult conversation

with your constituents about race? that's another one, i know that you've had particular challenges on that front. you've been an active mayor as far as trying to resolve issues in your community. this has become a problem as we know, in a lot of places, i have this question as to whether it's more of a problem today than it was 10 years ago or we're just talking about it more, we're more aware of it? - yeah. - but in fact it's been a problem at the same level all along. talk about that from your perspective as mayor. - it's a serious challenge. - yeah. - and one of south bend's great strengths is we're a very diverse city. we're about 25% african american, we're about 15% latino that's growing quickly, and like every city, we've had challenges about trust between the police department and members of the community. we've had challenges in terms of making sure that the makeup of our department or our administration reflects the community - reflects the community. - as a whole, which is incredibly important. and it's difficult to have conversations about that because it's so emotional, but we also know that if we don't have those conversations, it'll come back and bite us later. we've got to take these things seriously, and frankly it's another example where we talk about it as a national issue. but all these things really cash out at the local level,

whether we're talking about police community relations, or just the way people are treated. i mean one thing that's really alarming to me, i spent time with a youth task force that we created, highschoolers from all over the city, it's a really great group. they're signaling to me that bullying and taunting over race is on the rise in high schools in our city since the election, that is an alarming thing to hear. - ok, stop for a second. do you want to put that entirely on the president? because there's a sense that maybe, in his choice of words, the way he has talked about issues, that he has essentially pulled the stopper out of the test tube and allowed the virus to be released. - it's not like he singlehandedly did this, the country-- - no but at the same time words matter and leadership matters and people are given permission-- - that's what it is. - to say things, subtext is text, now. - not only giving permission, but giving a way to do it. when you have a high school basketball game in indiana and the fans of the predominantly white school taunt the fans of the predominantly latino school by chanting trump, trump, trump at them, you can't say this has nothing to do

with our presidential leadership. - i wonder what they're thinking. - now at the same time, you know, what it's uncorking is a lot deeper. and we've also got, as we hold each other accountable for doing a better job at things like race relations, we've got to acknowledge that when some of the people in this country used to own some other people in this country, it's gonna take more than a couple generations to deal with that and to move on from it. - and the reality is, in a lot of cities, the confederate statue and confederate monument question is a real source of consternation. - of course it is, it's not just about history. faulkner said that "the past is never dead, "it isn't even past." and that's very much i think what the confederate statue debate is about. - it's being cast in some quarters as a choice between history and what you choose to celebrate. you know you don't forget history, you don't ignore history, but you do choose what you celebrate. - yeah the way we talk about the past has an impact on the present. that's why these things are so raw, that's why they're so important. and we've gotta make some commitments to each other. - [evan] you're unconflicted about that?

- yeah! look, you can't just say oh well, it's history. or that confronting it means that we're or that confronting it means that we're erasing our own history. - right. - it's much deeper than that. but what we can do and what we do know is that the way we behave, the way we treat each other the way our policies are organized, have an impact on our ability to conquer this for the future so that you know, my kids and grandkids will, if these issues haven't been cured by then will at least be that much further along. and that's why it's, i think so painful for a lot of us to feel like we're watching our society take a step backwards. - i want to talk a little bit about your bio. i want people out in the community, people watching this to feel bad about what they haven't achieved relative to what you have achieved. (laughing) you were the valedictorian of your high school class? - mm hmm. - you went to harvard. - yeah. - you were a rhodes scholar? - yeah. - you are a reservist in the military? - mm hmm. - in the... - navy. - which branch, the navy. and then you deployed. - yeah i did a tour in afghanistan in 2014. - right. - yeah. - make me feel bad about myself just sitting here.

it's wonderful resume lines but beyond that it shows that you aspire to great things and that you've achieved at a high level. i'm not as interested in the education stuff as i am, in particular about the military stuff. because we're at a moment now where there are a lot of people who served in afghanistan and iraq who are cycling back into non-military society that are getting involved in office, running for office or public service, there's been, it's like a boom, a little boom of this. - yeah i'm really energized to see a generation of leaders that's emerging. - and both parties! - yeah. - yeah both parties. - yeah it's a generation of post-9-11 vets who served in iraq or afghanistan and one reason that i think it's very healthy is that you have a generation of people who, again, politics isn't theoretical for us. i think where politics is at its most dangerous is when you talk about events or whole categories of people as this kind of abstraction that's over there. a lot of people will be cruel in the way they talk about, let's say, immigrants or minorities who would never dream of treating a person that way if they knew them. i think the same thing is what's turned the tables on

lgbt issues, there's a lot of people realizing that the way they talked about a group in the abstract wasn't compatible with the way they believed people they know ought to be treated. and for people who served in the military, you know this isn't chess pieces. when you see the president of the united states at the un, you know that you might find yourself carrying a weapon on foreign soil again because of that. you're very much aware that your life literally depends on the decisions made by politicians. and so i think it just adds a level of urgency, a level of seriousness. the other thing is, i actually think, in a polarized era, it furnishes a way to cut across some of these divisions that shouldn't be dividing us. so just in the way that in the wwii generation, the navy was a place where somebody like a young john f kennedy could find himself on more or less equal terms with a son of a farmer or a southern african american that he might not have met otherwise. - right. - and then we got to a period where the reverse was the case. where the military got really skewed

toward some classes and not others. today i think that's headed back in the right direction. and it means that i think veterans, i certainly find that one of the best chances i have of having a great conversation with an ideological conservative is if we begin by relating over a common experience. when i was downrange, nobody cared, when we were getting into a vehicle that i was driving or guarding, nobody cared whether i was going home to a girlfriend or boyfriend or where my father had immigrated from. they wanted to know if i knew how to use my rifle and if i'd studied the route intelligence right. and that kind of clarity of thinking can be very healthy and i think it can do a lot of good if more of these vets get elected. - a difference, at least for me in my perception of this is that a number of vets are coming back to run or get involved are self identifying as democrats. - [pete] yeah. - that's not to say that there were not veterans who self identified as democrats previously, but it just seems like that's an interesting aspect to this. i think about jason kander, we've talked about jason kander who ran for the senate in missouri. here in texas there's a decorated veteran named mj hegar who's running for congress who wrote a book called shoot like a girl, it is a bestseller. these are all democrats. - right.

- and i know the democrats have felt, over the years something to prove on this question of toughness in large measure, because republicans have made the assumption that democrats are weak on the military, weak on national service or military service, i just think it's an interesting level up. - yeah. - right that you now have this situation where you've got these people running-- - i think there's no reason why democrats shouldn't be a strong national security party. i think all of the ideologies and party affiliations got scrambled really, probably from the moment that george w bush decided to invade iraq. this idea that democrats belong any less in national security or are represented any less among people from the veteran world who are stepping up. i think we can finally say that's been put to bed. - that's just wrong-- - it's time to talk about the future. - that's just wrong. so on this question of the future. you sought unsuccessfully the chair position at the democrat national committee. you're one of 11 candidates. you were well thought of, written about very favorably. you came out of it with your reputation intact, in fact, arguably more people knew about you afterwards than did before, and people thought based on how you ran, how you conducted yourself,

and the things you said, that you had a future. it may turn out that it was better not to get the job. (laughing) right? - well it's a really difficult job. - well look, tom perez looks miserable. have you seen him recently? ever time i see him he looks like he wants to go home for the night. - yeah no, i saw him not long ago and you know he's doing tremendous, he's working tremendously hard-- - [evan] yeah. - in a job that is just structurally very difficult. - well there's a rebuild of a sort going on at the dnc isn't there? - there ought to be. i mean the party's gotta retool, look, we would'a been in trouble, a lot of people think democrats are in trouble 'cause we lost the white house, one of the things i was arguing when i was running for dnc chair is, we would be in big trouble as a party even had we won the white house. especially as a party that's finally beginning to realize that we can't treat the presidency like it's the only office that matters. look at what's going on in the state houses. our counterparts on the other side of the aisle patiently and cleverly, you know some of it started here in texas with school board races in the '80s. - right. the untold story, mr mayor of the obama years, is it was make-america-red-again, right?

how many governorships went republican? how many state house races went republican? - we lost something like 1000 seats. - right, right. - and we've got to do a better job there, we gotta pay closer attention to the different dynamics, and it's a signal that the party's in trouble, now, i don't think we're in trouble 'cause our values are wrong. on the contrary, if you survey americans, they're more and more believing things that are in line with what the democratic party has always stood for. i also don't think it's 'cause we don't have a message. i know people say that, to me our message is very clear, we're the party that supports and defends the ordinary people going about their everyday lives. - do you think that's agreed upon by everybody in the party? your party is a bit at war now. the bernie wing and the hillary wing, that could be exaggerated. - yeah. - but again, having witnessed the dnc race up close, i can tell you, that divide is a thing. - it is a thing but the fact that those wings are named after people rather than ideas i think is one example of how this-- - that's just lazy journalism on my part. (laughing) i'm copping to it. - you know that, there were these factions that developed

but it's not really necessarily something we can't transcend by returning to the core values that make us democrats. and i think there's a way to talk about fairness for example that demonstrates why it's a false choice to suggest that we can either speak to the working class in parts of the country like where i'm from, or we can be true to our bedrock commitments that give us our moral authority on racial and social justice. the idea that that's an either or. - it could be both and. - it has to be a both and, the idea that's either or is crazy. but we've got to return to a vocabulary of fairness. - yep. - and think about freedom and remember that we can't leave the idea of freedom to the other side, especially when, in my personal experience, my freedom has been better secured by things that the democratic party or progressives have been able to do. i think a lot more americans are more free to do things like, not just live a good life but maybe leave a workplace they've had enough of to start a business, an entrepreneurial,

because of the affordable care act. we've done a lot to make people more free. if we start thinking about it in those terms i think we'll find, on our side of the aisle, we've got more in common than you might believe when you read the insider political press. - so we got about a minute left. i want to know what you plan to do next because there are people who are saying on your behalf, you're not saying it yourself necessarily, but there are people, well why not, mayor b for president? or for governor or for senator, you know, something big. but president has come up. - the next thing i'm gonna do is get on a plane and go back to south bend where-- - ok! - i'm the mayor. (laughing) - ah! i'm gonna push you to actually answer it. - i mean look, a day job like mayor isn't a job that you have just so you can get another job. it is immediate, it's important and it commands just about all my attention. to the extent that i have any attention left professionally, politically i'm putting my energy into hitting home this package-- - but you do have ambitions beyond being mayor? - i can't be a mayor forever. - right. - i know that.

and i know that i'll have a decision to make in 2019 about whether to seek a third term or not. - but you will serve out this term. - that's my plan. - for sure? - absolutely. - ok. - also say that every compelling opportunity that i've had in politics has come as a bit of a surprise. i didn't know that i'd run for state treasurer in 2010 in indiana which is how i cut my teeth. i certainly didn't know that i was gonna be running for dnc, nobody sits on their mother's knee and says i wanna be a party chair one day, right? - yes, no one who's well balanced. (laughing) - but it happened because there was this moment where i saw, i realized that what was needed and what i was about, and what i had to offer, there was this fit between them, that's how i became mayor too. and i think anyone looking for a job opportunity ought to be on the lookout for that. - ok mr mayor, good luck with everything that you do and good luck to you personally and maybe if you make a new career path for yourself you'll come back and talk to us again. - thank you, it's a pleasure. - all right mr mayor, thanks very much. pete buttigieg, thank you, good. (applauding) we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard

to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - we had just enough money in the budget to do one poll, so we did that while we were running. and one of the things pollsters do is they test all your attributes, so if you knew that pete was whatever, was in the navy, would you be more or less likely to vote, you know, all the things in my bio. and one of the things they tested is if you knew that i was 28.9 years old. and they showed me in the results, the older the voter was, the more likely they were to think that that was a positive. to think that that was a positive.

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óóóooo?vívvvv"hh@l%$?? [country music] (male narrator) memphis, tennessee. it has been written if music were religion, then memphis would be jerusalem and sun studio its most sacred shrine. (female singing) ♪ you walk into the room ♪ and i start crumbling (male narrator) and you are here with the country duo. ♪ you do that to me ♪ and all the girls around you think you're somethin' ♪ ♪ well, i'm hopin'... - hey, i'm kasey rausch and along with my bandmate marco pascolini we're the country duo. super excited to be here at the legendary sun studio, the birthplace of rock 'n' roll. i'm a native of kansas city, missouri. parkville, missouri actually, little river town that kansas city has now usurped. and i'm at least a fourth-generation musician and so, i've grown up all my life surrounded by music,