Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been a failure in his current role and hails from Indiana. Naturally, Michigan Democrats have decided this would make him perfect to be their governor.
Buzz is building for Buttigieg to take over in Michigan after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as the Biden administration winds to a merciful end. Buttigieg is still seen as a Democratic star and future presidential prospect, and so naturally, Democrats want to slot him into office somewhere so he can continue to stick around on the political scene. Enter Michigan, where Buttigieg moved after his failed 2020 presidential run.
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The first problem with this is that Buttigieg is a lifelong Indiana resident. He was born in, went to high school in, and was elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Before becoming mayor, he worked on multiple campaigns for Indiana Democrats and then ran statewide for the Indiana Treasurer’s position. He served as mayor of South Bend up to 2020 and only moved to Michigan in 2022, meaning he has been a resident of the state he supposedly wants to become governor of for just two years by this point.
The other problem with this is that Buttigieg hasn’t shown he should be put in charge of anything larger than a city of 103,000 people, much less a state of 10 million. The only government role Buttigieg has held besides his mayor position is the transportation secretary position he holds now. In his time on the job, Buttigieg oversaw multiple failures, including going silent for ten days about a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that led to an environmental crisis and the evacuation of the area due to hazardous chemicals.
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Buttigieg was also missing in action during the supply chain crisis. With ships loaded with shipping containers were stuck waiting for ports to clear, Buttigieg was on paternity leave for at least two months, on vacation with his husband and their two adopted children. Buttigieg’s Transportation Department also failed to build electric vehicle chargers, just about the only real policy entrusted to it, building eight charging stations over two years with the goal of hitting 500,000 by 2030.
In his first taste of power beyond medium-sized town mayor, Buttigieg was reduced to a glorified campaign surrogate for President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris. He was absent on the job the only times anyone would expect to hear from the transportation secretary, and now he wishes to run for governor in a state he never lived in because a Democrat-leaning swing state would be more politically advantageous for him than his lifelong GOP-run home state. Buttigieg is a ladder climber, not a leader, and his political career has made that clear.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
