Riding a surge before the New Hampshire primary, 2020 Democratic frontrunner Pete Buttigieg on Sunday said imprisoning people for drug possession “doesn’t work” and rebuffed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s gibe he is “no President Obama.”
“He’s right. I’m not. Neither his he. Neither is any of us,” Mr. Buttigieg told Fox News Sunday.
Mr. Buttigieg is running on a platform of generational change and highlighting his experience in the industrial Midwest in the helter-skelter race to take on President Trump in November.
He’s seeing a real bounce from his quasi-victory in the messy Iowa caucuses, where he largely split winners’ spoils with Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
Yet some of his opponents say the 38-year-old doesn’t have the right type of experience to win.
Mr. Biden took a hard swipe at the young candidate by contrasting his high-profile experience in global diplomacy and federal health reform with Mr. Buttigieg’s municipal efforts to improve sidewalks, toughen pet licensing and the like.
Speaking at a cozy inn in Bedford, New Hampshire, Mr. Buttigieg said rural areas that are “tired of being treated as a punch line” and he will “carry those voices, instead of thinking the answers are going to come from Washington.”
Mr. Buttigieg is facing questions about his appeal among black voters after he took heat on the debate stage for rising arrests of black men for marijuana offenses during his tenure in South Bend.
He’s also still grappling with how he handled the firing of South Bend’s black police chief.
Mr. Buttigieg, hoping to add context to the debate, said he instituted implicit-bias training for law enforcement and demanded transparency on uses of force.
“Is the record mixed? Of course it is. Because the reality is so tough and so complex, and we had a lot of issues to deal with in my eighth year, just as we did in my first year,” M. Buttigieg told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But no one can say that we were not intentional and that we do not have results to show for it.”
He also said black residents were less likely to be arrested on drug charges than in the rest of Indiana or the country.
Still “the disparity is real,” he said, saying he will seek to decriminalize drug possession as president.
“Criminalizing addiction doesn’t work, the incarceration does more harm than the offense it’s intended to deal with,” Mr. Buttigieg said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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