David Crowley had one day left to make his case to Wisconsin, and he spent it with Pete Buttigieg.
On Monday, the day before voters pick their next governor, the Milwaukee County executive’s bus tour rolled through Kenosha, Racine, and Greendale with the former transportation secretary at his side. In Racine, Buttigieg gave a speech of just over 10 minutes and told the crowd that Crowley’s priorities “are the priorities of the people of Wisconsin.”
Now think about what Crowley needs on Tuesday. He needs Milwaukee and Black voters there to turn out in big numbers. Signs show those voters are tired of being taken for granted. Despite every surrogate the Democratic Party could offer, Crowley closed with the one national Democrat who has spent years failing with Black voters.
Buttigieg’s trouble started almost the moment he became mayor of South Bend. In March 2012, a few months into his first term, he forced out Darryl Boykins, the city’s first Black police chief. When Boykins took back his resignation, Buttigieg demoted him to captain that same afternoon. Boykins sued, claiming racial animus, and the city settled. Buttigieg himself later called it his “first serious mistake as mayor.”
Seven years later, it got worse. In June 2019, a South Bend police sergeant shot and killed Eric Logan, a 54-year-old Black man, and his body camera was off. When Buttigieg returned from the campaign trail, residents confronted him outside police headquarters. One woman told him, “You’re running for president, and you want black people to vote for you? That’s not going to happen.” At a town hall days later, Buttigieg admitted his efforts to recruit minority officers and bring in body cameras “have not succeeded.”
His signature housing program did not help. “1,000 Houses in 1,000 Days” tore down homes in Black and Latino neighborhoods on a deadline. Local owners who wanted to fix their properties found themselves buried in repair orders and fines. About 60% of the houses were demolished rather than repaired.
Then there was the 2011 public television appearance, when he was running for mayor, where Buttigieg said kids need to see that education works, but “there are a lot of kids, especially in lower-income, minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t somebody they know personally who testifies to the value of education.” When the clip resurfaced in 2019, he conceded the remark could sound like “validating a narrative that sometimes blames the victim.”
His presidential campaign tried to paper over all of this with a “Douglass Plan for Black America,” and it botched the rollout. The campaign put South Carolina Black leaders at the top of a press release about the plan, and some of them said they never endorsed it. State Rep. Ivory Thigpen said his name went out because he missed an opt-out email. Johnnie Cordero, chairman of the Democratic Black Caucus, put it bluntly: “You can’t talk for black people, we’re very capable of speaking for ourselves.”
Black voters noticed. A November 2019 Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina Democrats had Buttigieg at less than 1% among Black voters. Two months later, a national Quinnipiac poll had him at zero percent. When South Carolina finally voted, he pulled 3% of Black voters and quit the race the next day.
That is the man Crowley picked to close his campaign. It fits a candidate who has leaned on a parade of big-name surrogates instead of answers. Kamala Harris came last week. Wes Moore came last month. Now Buttigieg. Black Milwaukee has heard this pitch every election, and many voters there are done being treated like a campaign stop.
Tom Tiffany is offering something real. He wants to give the $3 billion surplus back to taxpayers, cut the red tape on home building, and audit state government. He backs expanding school choice, a lifeline for thousands of Black Milwaukee families, while Crowley opposes taking it statewide. And Tiffany didn’t nearly double Milwaukee County’s sales tax.
Crowley had one last chance to show Black Milwaukee he gets it. He brought Pete Buttigieg. On Tuesday, Wisconsin should send Tom Tiffany to Madison.
