By GLYNIS HART
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CLAREMONT – Stevens High School gym was transformed into a national stage Sunday night for a live Town Hall on Fox News, where host Chris Wallace questioned presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg.
Claremont police mingled with Secret Service to provide security for the event, which was free but required advance tickets. About 350 audience members were seated on folding chairs surrounding the stage, under the lights, camera booms and other paraphernalia of the cable television network. Another hundred or so people, from makeup artists to stage manager, sound crews and media minders, milled about off camera.
Candidate Elizabeth Warren has declined to appear on a Fox News town hall, saying the cable news giant supports discrimination and hate speech. However, Buttigieg told the Eagle Times he’s mindful that millions of Americans view Fox News as their main news source and it’s important to reach them with a message they might not otherwise hear.
“I’m certainly troubled by the right-wing bias of some of the commentators,” he said. “But we have to reach people where they are.”
He had a brief look around Claremont Sunday before the show. “Even though the scale is different, it reminds me of home in certain ways. It’s a city that’s had many blows, but it’s not taking it lying down. We could see there’s been work put into downtown revitalization, and from the audience there was a lot of pride in Claremont.”
During the show, Buttigieg touched on several of the key points of his candidacy and rebutted questions by Wallace on his age and his appeal (or lack of appeal) to black and minority voters.
Wallace went straight for the age question: Buttigieg would be the youngest person elected to the presidency, should he win. In order to run for president, a candidate must be 35 years old; Buttigieg is just two years past that. Was he qualified?
“You say we need a president who’s making choices for 2054,” said Wallace, “Which is when you would be the age President Trump is now.”
“It’s personal,” said Buttigieg. “What the world is going to look like in 2050 is personal, because I’m going to be there. It gives me an ability to speak to these issues.
“I don’t think any age should be disqualifying unless you’re too young under the law,” he said. “I believe we’re living in one of those ages like the beginning of the Reagan era, which just now has come to a crashing halt with the takeover of the Republican Party. What we’re trying to do is different, because the moment we’re in is different.”
Buttigieg said his qualifications are sufficient. “I’ve got more experience governing than the president, more executive experience than the vice president, and more military experience than both.”
According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, Buttigieg began thinking how to redefine the Democratic party when he was a student at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Raised Catholic, Buttigieg later became Episcopalian and has made reclaiming the moral high ground central to his campaign: “I would say the presidency is a moral office,” he told the audience. “It’s a point of pride that we care about values and we want to make sure our leadership reflects that.”
Buttigieg served overseas in Afghanistan, and he said that the president offering pardons to war criminals undermines our security, because “even if we don’t live up to them all the time” the values exemplified by the American flag are important in the countries where we have troops.
Stevens High School Principal Pat Barry asked him, “Do you think America is ready for a gay president?”
“I do think so,” he said. “I was already mayor when I decided to come out. I thought, whatever happens to my career, this is something I need to do. I just wrote it up and put it in the newspaper … I was reelected with 80 percent of the vote.
“At the end of the day it’s worth trusting voters,” he said. “Americans are going to vote on who’s going to make them better off.”
Wallace grilled him on his lack of support and recognition among minority voters. Buttigieg answered that when he became mayor of South Bend, there was a lot of distrust between the black community and the city administration and police, and it took time to change that. “We don’t have that much time,” he said of the presidential race. “Black and brown voters are just skeptical; we have to work harder in our outreach and our substance. Not just on criminal justice issues, but entrepreneurship and health.”
Wallace asked him about beating Trump. “He’s a very strong and unconventional candidate. He’s already making fun of your looks and your name, sending out tweets.”
The audience erupted in laughter when Buttigieg said, “The tweets — I don’t care.”
He continued, “I get it, it’s mesmerizing. It’s the nature of grotesque things, you can’t look away … but their positions as a general rule are unpopular. We’ve got to make it less about him and more about you, more about what serves Americans.
“I think we’ve got to find them where they are,” he said. “Not change our values, but update our vocabulary, and reach out.”
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