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President-elect Joe Biden is expected to pick former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg to head the Transportation Department, according to three people familiar with the plans.
Buttigieg, one of Biden’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, was a breakout star of the primaries. He suspended his campaign before Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden.
The three people confirmed the news to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to publicly preempt the president-elect’s announcement. The Transportation Department helps oversee the nation’s highway system, planes, trains and mass transit and is poised to play a key role early in the incoming administration.
Buttigieg is the former mayor of Indiana’s fourth largest city, holding the position from 2012 to 2020. He also served a seven-month deployment as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. With his presidential campaign, he became the first openly gay man to become — however briefly — a leading presidential candidate. He has been married to his husband, Chasten, since 2018.
LGBTQ rights groups immediately spoke out in praise of Biden’s selection of Buttigieg.
“Pete’s nomination is a new milestone in a decades-long effort to ensure LGBTQ people are represented throughout our government – and its impact will reverberate well-beyond the department he will lead,” said Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute. “It distances our nation from a troubled legacy of barring out LGBTQ people from government positions and moves us closer to the President-elect’s vision of a government that reflects America.”
The South Bend chapter of Black Lives Matter, however, denounced Buttigieg’s impending nomination. The group had made their displeasure of Buttigieg known during his presidential campaign, following the 2019 South Bend shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.
“We saw Black communities have their houses torn down by his administration,” BLM’s South Bend leader Jorden Giger said in a statement, referring to Buttigieg’s effort to tear down substandard housing. “We saw the machinery of his police turned against Black people.”
Biden has compared the 38-year-old Buttigieg to his late son, Beau.
“To me, it’s the highest compliment I can give any man or woman. And, like Beau, he has a backbone like a ramrod,” Biden said during the March event, as Buttigieg stood behind him, bowing his head. “I promise you, over your lifetime, you’re going to end up seeing a hell of a lot more of Pete than you are of me.”
Biden has pledged to spend billions making major infrastructure improvements and on retrofitting initiatives that can help the U.S. battle climate change. He also wants to immediately mandate mask-wearing on airplanes and public transportation systems to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Infrastructure spending can be a bipartisan issue, and President Donald Trump spent years promising to push a major bill through Congress that never materialized. Instead his administration moved to soften carbon emissions standards that Biden’s team will likely work to undo as part of the broader commitment to slowing global warming.
Despite having governed a city of barely 100,000, Buttigieg was credited with transforming traffic with his Smart Streets initiative, a three-year project to convert 8 miles of multilane thoroughfares into two-way routes that enhanced South Bend’s downtown. The project received awards for environmental protection.
Though on a far smaller scale than the nation’s transportation systems, the project, as well as Buttigieg’s initiative to convert the city’s sewers to a smart-flow system, demonstrate what supporters praised as Buttigieg’s next-generation infrastructure vision.
The once most frequently mentioned early pick to head the Transportation Department, President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff and ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, sparked strong pushback from top progressive activists. Emanuel, also a former congressman, helped oversee the Obama administration’s distribution of tens of billions of dollars in transportation spending as part of a massive stimulus bill approved following the financial crisis—but now seems unlikely to take any position in Biden’s administration.
His chances faded after progressives and civil rights leaders were very critical of Emanuel’s handling of the high-profile police shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager killed by a white officer, during his time as Chicago’s mayor.
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Heehaw!
Good choice. While transportation may not have been his focus to now, rational thinking and organization certainly have been. Glad to see him – and Indiana – being a part of the new cabinet.
+1
Pete did not share victory in Iowa with Bernie. In fact, Pete finished with more State Delegate Equivalents. He is seen widely as the winner of the Iowa caucus. A phenomenal accomplishment for a relatively unknown, at the time, gay candidate. This paid reader expects better.
Care to offer your choice since you seem to be convinced this choice is not appropriate?
Kacie, this is an Associated Press article. This Feb. 27 article explains why it didn’t declare a single winner:
AP decides not to declare Iowa caucus winner after recount
The Iowa Democratic Party on Thursday released updated results of the Iowa caucuses after the completion of a recount requested by the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.
In the new results, Buttigieg has 562.954 state delegate equivalents and Sanders has 562.021 state delegate equivalents out of 2,151 counted. That is a margin of 0.04 percentage points.
The Associated Press has reviewed the updated results and will not call a winner, given remaining concerns about whether the results as reported by the party are fully accurate. The Feb. 3 caucuses were beset by technical glitches that led to a delay in reporting the results, inconsistencies in the numbers and no clear winner.
This is as high as hell reach politically, in all likelihood. Transportation as a whole is not going to have a very successful next four years. Hope he’s got an angle to a meaningful private sector capacity.
Transportation will likely play a huge role over the next four years. Infrastructure is probably one of the only things the two parties could possibly come together and pass a bill on.
Except, we’ve been hearing and saying that for 20 years.
You might be right or I might be right, so we’ll have to wait and find out after inauguration. No one thought healthcare reform was possible, yet Obama got it done. Infrastructure seems like a far easier task, and I have some hope that Republicans will work with Biden better than they did with Obama. He’s worked with many of them for decades. Hopefully personal relationships at least still matter in Congress. I don’t have much faith, but I’ve got to have some. Nancy and Mitch seem to be finally speaking about Covid aid. That’s some progress.
Realistically, he has one shot at signature legislative success. I’d rank the likelihood of passage, in order: healthcare amendment; partial student loan forgiveness; broad criminal justice reform; tax code reformation; and then a litany of minor signatures. All in all, the only issue I’d out substantial infrastructure spending ahead of is marijuana rescheduling.
It’s not even so much a red v. Blue issue anymore. He’s going to have to expend significant political capital within his own party just to achieve relatively minor things.
Broad point being, if infrastructure doesn’t get prioritized – rightfully or not – it’s going to be a stain on Pete just as much, if not moreso than Biden. His political star won’t be bright forever. The Democratic field was littered with former future stars whose time unexpectedly came early. I see him as more Julian Castro than Barack Obama.
Maybe Mayor Pete can get the I-75 Bridge over the Ohio River funded. Be it tolls or other revenue generating. This is the main clog point between Canada and Southern States. The bridge currently in place is decades past its designed life, and while it would not shock drivers having to creep over this rusting hulk, a replacement will take years to engineer and build.
Every politician swings by and claims it is a worthy shovel ready project. One of these people has to earmark the funds and get it replaced. Interstate Commerce is being impacted.
Congrats to Buttigieg. Transportation encompasses a vast array for facilities ad functions. But the key to achieving improvements is, of course, an agreement on funding which heretofore cannot be cited as a bi-partisan success story. Specific project are not the responsibility of the Transportation secretary but fall to the project sponsors first and foremost to clearly define the project by scope and cost, conduct required environmental analysis, and develop a funding plan that congressional representatives can advance. But, project need to stand on merit as earmarks for pet projects of questionable or marginal utility will compare badly to other national projects also requesting funding. Exceptions for fast tracking exist such as for the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis many years ago. One would think the dire state of roadway and railways in this nation would garner bipartisan support for funding and the more critical ongoing costs of maintenance. The US is behind Europe, China, Japan in every aspect of transportation that benefits citizens on a daily basis. Yes, attempts to travel intergalactically are nice, but how many of our neighbors do that. And, then there is Indiana which has enacted regressive policies regarding transportation planning but promulgated few, apparently, policies to advance sound transportation planning. Planning by statute is poor planning – one can respectfully opine that many in the statehouse voting again specific policies could not describe the mode or impact or viability of items they approved. The private section is beneficial in project delivery once a plan is defined and approved and funding is assured by the project sponsor – no private entity will build a transport project without a clear return on investment that is assured by the state or federal government; private-public partnerships do not reflect ‘free’ money (nothing is free) but instead offer an alternative method to more efficiently completed final design, construction, implementation, and operational management for a set fee. The sad case is that many states or local entities enter into agreements to deliver a project, then insist on myriad changes and updates and modifications due to public outcries or complaints from powerful community benefactors. Significant subsequent changes can lead to cost increases so great that the private partner will [sue to] leave the project or the sponsor/public must pay a premium for requested changes.