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What America would look like: Pete Buttigieg

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Pete Buttigieg
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To help local voters decide which candidate to support, Las Vegas Weekly and its sister publication the Las Vegas Sun invited the top candidates for interviews in recent weeks to explore their stances on key issues. We chose those candidates based on the same qualifications used to determine their eligibility to participate in the February 7 Democratic debate. Here’s our look at those candidates.

Pete Buttigieg

Age: 38

Bio: Former two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana (2012-20), Rhodes scholar and U.S. veteran, having served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve

Pete Buttigieg got on the national radar in November 2016 when President Barack Obama identified him as one of the nation’s most gifted young Democrats.

Four years later, Buttigieg is showing the country why he drew Obama’s attention. He’s gone from being the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to one of the leaders in the Democratic field while demonstrating the poise and eloquence that many Americans badly miss in a president.

Like others in the field, Buttigieg has placed a priority on addressing climate change and immigration, and his stances on those key issues place him among the moderates in the race.

But his plans also reflect the 38-year-old Rhodes scholar’s intelligence and fresh thinking. Among his initiatives:

Health Care

Buttigieg’s plan tries to strike a balance between the party’s center and left by maintaining private insurance but not necessarily indefinitely—unlike plans that either call for an immediate end to the private option or would discontinue it at a set point in the future. His approach is to expand the Affordable Care Act and then let Americans decide whether to stay on their private plan or switch over to a public option.

“I think we need to put a little more humility into our policy, that says, ‘Look, if we’re right and this really is the plan that is the best for everybody, then everybody moves over to it and it is Medicare for All’,” he said. “But if for some people it’s not the right answer and isn’t as good as what they’ve got, then why should we dictate a number of years before they have to switch? Let them keep the plan that works for them.”

Immigration

Like other candidates, Buttigieg supports a path to citizenship for 11 million long-term undocumented immigrants. His position on overhauling Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection reflects his efforts to appeal to moderate voters: He’s against the overhauls. Elsewhere on immigration, his ideas include:

• Offering national service opportunities for people to obtain citizenship. That would include AmeriCorps positions, along with the creation of a climate corps that would take on such projects as weatherizing senior housing.

• Establishing a community renewal visa that would allow local officials to identify their specific workforce needs and craft visa requests to meet those needs. The visa is designed to leave residents feeling less concerned that newcomers are taking jobs that otherwise would be theirs.

Climate Change

Buttigieg’s climate plan calls for a federal investment of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, including $200 billion in clean energy research and development. He offers several creative ideas as part of his plan, including:

• Issuing climate action bonds that are similar to war bonds. The climate bonds would allow Americans to invest in addressing global warming.

• Creating $5 billion in Resilient America Grants that would allow communities to address climate projects.

Other Policies

Buttigieg has long-running problems with black voters, stemming from criticisms he faced from the African American community in South Bend when he was mayor. To address the matter, Buttigieg unveiled what he called his Douglass Plan, which called for such actions as reducing mass incarceration by 50%, ending racial health care bias and investing $50 billion in historically black universities and other minority-serving institutions, according to his website.

System Reforms

• Buttigieg would attempt to abolish the Electoral College. He also proposed a plan—which some critics have dismissed as unconstitutional—to boost the number of seats on the U.S. Supreme Court to 15, with progressives picking five members, conservatives picking five and the court itself selecting the other five.

In Conclusion

With Buttigieg as president, the nation would be led by another beginner—albeit one who at least has municipal government experience and is exponentially smarter than the current occupant of the White House. There would be another cycle of on-the-job training, and potentially the missteps that come with it. But Buttigieg’s character and values—he’s contemplative, eloquent, respectful, disciplined and well-read—place him 180 degrees opposite of Trump. And with a strong and properly empowered team around him, he could be a strong president. His policies generally are down the middle of the fairway among the Democrats, in most cases a logical extension of the Obama presidency.

How his presidency would affect black Americans is uncertain, however. Despite his Douglass Plan, a disturbing story emerged this year in which his minority staffers complained that their input was being disregarded.

The key question is whether Americans are ready to follow Trump with another president who will have to learn as he goes—even a very bright one.

Longer versions of these essays will run on lasvegassun.com in the coming week.

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