Thursday, March 28

At fundraiser, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg discusses platform


Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg took the stage to pitch his platform during a fundraiser at the AVALON Hollywood nightclub Tuesday. (Jintak Han/Daily Bruin senior staff)


Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg pitched his bid for the White House to supporters at a fundraiser in Hollywood on Tuesday.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, made a campaign stop in Los Angeles where he greeted over 1,000 supporters at the AVALON Hollywood nightclub to talk about his policies. He also held a donor luncheon Wednesday.

“I’m running for president because I believe our country is running out of time, that this is our shot and if we don’t act we will find ourselves in a few short years past the point of no return,” Buttigieg said at the fundraiser, citing a 2018 United Nations report that put a 12-year deadline to avoid a climate change catastrophe.

The event featured Shepard Fairey, creator of the iconic “Hope” poster for former-President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Yello, a newsletter run by reporter Hunter Schwarz, reported in June that Fairey considered Buttigieg his favorite candidate so far.

Buttigieg currently polls fifth in the Democratic primaries according to FiveThirtyEight, but ranks second in individual contributions, according to the New York Times. Buttigieg, 37, made a point of emphasizing his diverse background as the youngest and the only openly LGBT candidate currently running for the White House.

“This is your only chance to vote for a Maltese American, Episcopalian gay millennial veteran,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg opened his speech with a grim outlook for America, pitching himself as an antidote against a collapsing system.

“In 2030, if we don’t do things differently, a house in this country on average will cost half a million dollars, a college education will be $200,000, there’ll be 130 million more guns on the streets and a woman’s right to choose would not exist,” Buttigieg said. “We cannot allow that to be our future.”

Ian May, a fifth-year political science and statistics student at UCLA and a co-founder of an unofficial student group, UCLA Students for Pete, volunteered at the event. He agreed with Buttigieg’s plan to bolster federal tuition grants instead of making college completely tuition- or debt-free.

“Free tuition means that American taxpayers are also subsidizing (tuition) for students whose parents come from wealthy backgrounds,” May said. “It’s a very drastic change that I think is good in principle but not in practice.”

Kiley Gruenberg, an incoming first-year political science student at California State University, Long Beach, said she does not agree completely with Buttigieg’s policies on college tuition but thinks he is still the best candidate for his down-to-earth approach.

“I do think that he could do (that) in terms of tuition, I’m a little bit like, there’s pros and cons to it,” Gruenberg said. “But if (free tuition) isn’t a realistic approach, something that he can complete in the span of four or eight years, at least he acknowledges it.”

Solving social inequality is one of the core issues of Buttigieg’s campaign, alongside climate change. Earlier Tuesday, Buttigieg stopped by San Francisco to join protesting rideshare drivers advocating for higher wages. Chris Meagher, the national press secretary for the campaign, said tickets for the fundraiser were priced as low as $25 to be as accessible as possible.

Noah Jimenez, an incoming first-year civil engineering student at CSU Long Beach, took advantage of the cheap tickets and attended the fundraiser with his freshman friends Crystal Guiltinan and Gruenberg. While Guiltinan, a psychology student, and Gruenberg paid $25 for their tickets, Jimenez paid $50 because the lowest-priced tickets were all sold out.

“It definitely did catch our eye and was one of the reasons why we were able to come out,” Jimenez said. “Definitely affordable enough for the fact that we really wanted to hear him.”

The speech also went into detail on various issues like abolishing the electoral college, appealing to the Midwest, health insurance overhaul, labor reform, religious freedom and gender equality.

“And even though it might take a generation to deliver, I think we can start, soon enough, on the effort of making sure … that when our democracy picks its president, we do so by just counting up everybody’s votes,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg’s speech threw some jabs at President Donald Trump as well.

“People around the country are barely able to keep up economically. They’re choosing whether to buy prescription drugs or whether you buy groceries and the president’s got us arguing over whether to buy Greenland,” Buttigieg said.

Some of his international followers, however, were more reserved in their criticism of Trump. Charlotte Evans Souza, a first-year student from Brazil at the Musicians Institute, declined to comment on the current administration, citing fears of deportation.

An incoming Palestinian student at Harvard was stripped of his student visa, denied entry into the United States and sent back to Lebanon on Friday after immigration officers found people on his friends list criticizing the United States on social media, according to The Harvard Crimson. United States Customs and Border Protection declined to comment but confirmed the denial of entry, according to VICE.

Buttigieg also told his supporters not to let Trump dominate the discourse around the presidential race.

“And you’ll notice that as we come together to talk about our issues, I think we share a pretty similar, a very dim view of the president but we’re not allowing him to dominate our conversation,” Buttigieg said to his supporters.

Nonetheless, the anti-Trump rhetoric resonated with attendees.

“For me, it’s very important to try to get this current president out of office,” Guiltinan said. “I will vote for (Buttigieg) as our nominee, but if he doesn’t become the nominee, and it’s another Democrat, I will still find importance in voting.”

 

Former senior staff photojournalist and news reporter

Jintak Han is a former senior staff photojournalist and news reporter who graduated in 2020. He served as an Assistant Photo editor from 2016 to 2017. Working at the Bruin through his entire undergraduate career since 2014, Han has won national recognition and numerous awards for his photojournalism. He is also known for his investigative reporting for the City & Crime beat. Han currently works as a freelance photojournalist and reporter for multiple news organizations.


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