Castro Fires Back at Buttigieg in Skirmish Over Mayoral Experience: ‘Could Almost Fit South Bend in Our Alamodome’

Reed RichardsonNov 7th, 2019, 2:22 am
 

Democratic presidential candidate and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro dropped some facts on 2020 rival and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in their ongoing skirmish about their experience running city governments.

Appearing on The Daily Show, Castro pushed back at Buttigieg’s recent invitation to “walk him around South Bend and introduce him to folks if he’d like to learn how we tackled these really tough issues.”

Buttigieg’s comments came after Castro had earlier criticized Buttigieg’s record as mayor and his fractious relationship with the African-American community in his hometown. As a presidential candidate, Buttigieg has also struggled with black voters, as one poll by Quinnipiac this summer found Buttigieg had effectively zero percent support from them nationally.

“What do you think you have that differs to him with regards to the experience of being a mayor?” Trevor Noah asked Castro.

“I actually have a good track record with black voters. And with folks that I worked with in San Antonio which I think is different,” Castro said. “So what I said what was that it’s risky to have a candidate at the top of the ticket that cannot speak to, in a convincing way, those different communities, I think the track record is there on his end. In San Antonio my experience was the exact opposite of that. In fact, I got appointed to the Obama Administration of the housing administration because of the work we did on the east side of San Antonio, which traditionally was the African-American part of town.”

“I was mayor of a city that is 14 times larger than South Bend,” Castro noted, which is true. When he left office as San Antonio mayor, the city had nearly 1.4 million residents and ranked as seventh largest in the nation — and its African-American population alone was was roughly 100,000 people. By comparison, South Bend, Indiana’s total population, as of a 2018 Census estimate, was 101,860.

“So I think the track records are different,” Castro noted. “I am sure that there are some things that he has done that are good things and I have a lot of respect for Mayor Buttigieg. But I do think that our experience level is different. I don’t need to go see South Bend.”

And then Castro couldn’t resist dropping a zinger on Buttigieg just to drive home the point of who should be schooling who: “In fact, we could almost fit South Bend in our Alamodome in our San Antonio.”

Watch the video above, via Comedy Central.

 

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