South Bend’s Mayoral Election Could Decide More than Pete Buttigieg's Replacement

SOUTH BEND, IN—It was only 34 minutes into our conversation that Sean Haas paraphrased Field of Dreams. “If we have it, they will come,” he said.

Haas, a public school teacher and an Army veteran, is running for mayor in South Bend, Indiana. The “it” he’s talking about is threefold: better public safety, sturdier infrastructure, and a stronger trade-skills educational system. That’s what South Bend needs most, he says. Not flashy investments in downtown high rises, not more national media attention, and not a reckoning with “systemic racism,” which, in a recent debate, he said he doesn’t believe exists. And not the continued leadership of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who’s spent the larger part of his second term in local office running to be president of the United States.