Lessons from 'Mayor Pete's' South Bend racial crisis

When you're a small city mayor running for the Democratic presidential nomination, television news images of you getting yelled at by angry black constituents is not a good look.

That's because, among other reasons, black votes matter. A record high black turnout in 2012, for example, crucially helped to put President Barack Obama over the top in his reelection and a weak black turnout four years later helped to doom Hillary Clinton's bid.

With that in mind, this is a terrible time for South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg to be leading the evening news facing crowds of angry black constituents.

But while "Mayor Pete," as he asks everyone to call him, has been trying to get the nation's attention as one of the more than 20 contenders seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, black voters back home have been trying to get the attention of Mayor Pete.

That's a familiar story around the country. Despite the importance of African Americans to national Democratic races, especially in southern primaries, candidates and major news media tend to focus on the bonanza of swing voters waiting to be persuaded in the suburbs. That is, until a crisis breaks out -- such as, for example, the Los Angeles riots during the 1992 race.

The turmoil in South Bend was a problem Mayor Pete was obligated to fix. So he left the campaign trail last week to deal with the sort of crisis that too many mayors have had to manage: a police-involved shooting of an unarmed black civilian.

Or, in this case, lesser armed. Eric Logan, a 54-year-old black man, was reported to be carrying a knife and engaged in breaking into parked cars when he was fatally shot by white South Bend police Sgt. Ryan O'Neill. The officer was wearing one of the body cameras that the Buttigieg administration funded as a reform measure for its police, but the device was not turned on.

That became one more in a list of grievances that local activists and residents expressed to Buttigieg, whose testy relations with black community leaders have been a blemish on his two terms as mayor of what he calls one of the nation's "best-run" cities.

But, as in many cities, that's a mixed picture. While improvements are noticeable downtown in the city best known as home of the University of Notre Dame, a reported 40% of black residents live below the poverty line.

Diversity is almost always a flashpoint issue in urban police departments, but under Mayor Pete, the city's police department is less diverse, down from 26 black officers in 2014 to 13 in a recent count of the 253-officer force. Many say it also is less responsive in a city that was 26% black in the 2010 census.

Can Buttigieg recover? He's a relative unknown on the debate stage, especially among black voters. A Hart Research poll in May for the Black Economic Alliance found only 21% of African Americans were enthusiastic about or comfortable with him -- and almost half said they had never heard of him. That makes his debate performance crucially important to his national appeal, but he also needs to shore up his support back home so his constituents will have something besides complaints to tell reporters about him.

With that in mind, here are a few things that he and his fellow candidates would be wise to remember:

First, sound like you really care. Buttigieg roared from obscurity into a high national profile largely because of his interesting biography and a clear, persuasive speaking style that sounds downright soothing next to the high-energy, unpredictable style of our incumbent president.

But this son of two college professors must also avoid the "professor" syndrome, a label of gentle mockery used by supporters of Obama whenever the famously cool former law school teacher's coolness sounded too aloof.

Mayor Pete can draw from his own biography to help black voters, among others, get acquainted with him. His successful reelection after coming out as gay is well known. Ironically Obama and Joe Biden's support for same-sex marriage helped reduce some of the animosity he might face from conservative black churchgoers. But he also has been eloquently outspoken about his belief in the importance of religious faith as a moral compass, offering a liberal alternative to the religious right.

His experience as a Navy Reserve lieutenant who served seven months in Afghanistan offers important avenues to connections with black military veterans too.

But, just as important, he needs to mind his day job as mayor in a racially divided city. Charity, as the old saying goes, begins at home. So do politics.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)