Nothing has changed. Nothing will change.

by Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director at ACRE

During the primaries for the 2020 election my organization “anti endorsed” Pete Buttigieg. To us, Pete represents many of the things that are wrong with the Democratic Party. He is able to mask corporate values in the scent of progressivism — smiling in your face while declining to support actual progressive policy. Pete is not a progressive by any definition of the word. In that initial anti-endorsement statement we documented the things that Pete believes in, and what his true values are. We also explained why they are far from the values that are needed in this moment from an elected official in the highest levels of the government.

Our organization was no fan of Joe Biden either — in fact he was mentioned in that op-ed as another example of a Democratic politician who simply is not good enough. But like others we were relieved when he won the Presidency because it means the end of Donald Trump’s reign of terror and hopefully a shift in the policies he pushed forward across departments in his administration.

But truthfully we were also relieved when Pete dropped out of the Presidential race. We don’t want confusion about what true left politics are, especially considering how Pete catfished as a leftist. Politicians often privately rebrand themselves or commit to gaining skills that they need after such high profile losses, and do so in ways that are outside of the public eye. We had hoped that Pete would take this route, particularly because his loss, clearly the result of his nearly 0% Black support, was embarrassing for a modern Democratic candidate pegged to be the future of the party.

Unfortunately fate would have it otherwise. Pete is now in line to become the Transportation Secretary — a high level and important Cabinet position, and we feel the need to remind folks why this is a bad idea.

Pete has one political qualification. He was the mayor of South Bend, IN. South Bend is the 4th largest city in Indiana. Indiana is the 17th most populous state in the country. This is not to diminish South Bend as a city. But even in this small town, members of South Bend BLM opposed nearly everything he did as mayor and saw him unfit for higher office. We’re also sure that South Bend has many interesting issues regarding transportation. But how do those issues qualify a former mayor of a town of just 100,000 people to become Transportation Secretary? Compared to the hurdles that highly experienced women of color like Marcia Fudge and Deb Haaland have had to jump through to demonstrate their qualifications, this Buttigieg standard feels unfair and inequitable.

South Bend has 50 buses. South Bend’s airport services 13 cities. South Bend’s Department of Transportation has a $10,000,000 budget. That budget would represent approximately 0.01% of the Department of transportation’s budget. If Pete vocalized some level of expertise in transportation, transportation policy, airlines, railways, highways, buses, or even cars on the campaign trail, we missed it. This is not in his area of expertise. What he has talked a lot about is his support for Wall Street and Big Tech — his campaign had the most number of staffers and donations from tech companies. This, much like his Presidential campaign, is a brash and insubstantial white man failing upward and being rewarded with power that he is nowhere near qualified to wield.

So what should we expect out of Secretary Buttigieg? Pete hasn’t changed. If his past positions and policies are any indication, we should expect a race blind, pro-corporate Secretary of Transportation who is cozy with big tech and big business and, at best, clueless on issues of racial equity, labor and environmentalism. His selection as Transportation secretary is basically a gift to Uber and Lyft. The current secretary of transportation is also a race blind, pro-corporate Secretary who is cozy with big tech and big business and, at best, clueless on issues of racial equity, labor and environmentalism. We want to ask the Biden Administration, what does it mean to build back better if we allow unqualified white men with deep corporate ties into extremely powerful positions simply because they want them? That’s not building back better. That’s building back up the things that we need to destroy.

We strongly oppose Pete Buttigieg’s nomination for Secretary of Transportation. We urge Pete to have the decency to withdraw his name from consideration, and urge President-elect Biden to have the common sense to withdraw the nomination and nominate someone who will actually meet the moment, not the former Mayor of a mid-sized city with a history of no support from Black people and lots of ties to Big Tech and Wall Street.