HANCOCK, N.H. — The sun rose over a flag-draped red barn early Saturday morning as yellow school buses shuttled several hundred voters from a nearby public high school parking lot to the property of Eleanor and Doug Cochrane, where South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg took the outdoor stage for his first appearance of the day.
"Since this old house was built in 1802 when Thomas Jefferson was president, it has seen our nation grow and change," the host, Eleanor Cochrane, told the audience in her introduction. "I doubt that it's ever seen such an important gathering," she later added.
Buttigieg, not one to miss a beat, picked up on the detail right away as the applause died down and a hush fell over the crowd. His voice slowed over the speakers and for the first time all morning, a stillness settled over the clearing in the woods. "You got me thinking when you talked about this house since 1802 and all the changes that it's seen and it makes me wonder when folks are gathered at this house a couple hundred years from now, talking about everything that it's been through, what will they say about this moment?" he asked.
The forward-looking message of Buttigieg, along with his obvious intellect, effortless rhetoric and cerebral personality, reminded voters of another presidential candidate who barnstormed early-voting states like New Hampshire twelve summers ago: former President Barack Obama.
"He's wicked smart," said Jim Mason of Hancock, New Hampshire who liked Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 but was ranking his policy preferences "second to who can win" in the 2020 primary. "That seems to be the thing from him. Kind of like Obama in a way — he's a real thinker."
Mason came out to see Buttigieg, who he described as one of the two "less polarizing" candidates along with former Vice President Joe Biden, because he wanted to determine whether the South Bend Mayor could take the fight to President Donald Trump in a hypothetical general election matchup. "I want to get a sense if he can do battle," he said.
Carol Gehlbach of Jaffrey, New Hampshire also compared the 37-year-old to the then-Illinois Senator only three years removed from the state legislature. "Sort of like Obama, he's smart before his time, but he's also running before his time," she said. "God knows we're wanting someone who can speak the English language," she added.
Two younger voters who turned out for the early morning start time, brothers from Temple, New Hampshire, cited his outsider appeal, another similarity with the hope-and-change candidate who challenged the Clinton machine at the height of its powers in 2008. "He's not an establishment Democrat," Mike Robidoux said. William Robidoux added that Buttigieg, a "small town mayor" who "was not well-known" and "looks like a regular guy," shows that "anybody can do this."
And with the backdrop of a barn, a flag and a house built during the Jefferson administration, the unifying patriotism of Buttigieg also called to mind Obama, who famously told the Democratic National Convention "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America" in 2004.
"Patriotism, our love of our country and the symbol of its flag, is supposed to be something to bring us together, not something to beat somebody else over the head with," Buttigieg said.
Except for an acknowledgement that his marriage would not exist if not for a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, he mostly avoided discussion of his sexual orientation in the same way that Obama, the first black president, avoided discussion of his race. But while he extolled the virtues of patriotism and the flag — and later heralded the role of rural America, the military and religion — he told voters that his values were progressive.
"I'm not talking about conservative values," he said earlier in the speech. "I'm talking about American values and the fact that they have progressive implications if you take them seriously in our time." He gave the example that he interpreted American values of liberty and freedom to mean a "Medicare-for-all-who-want-it" public option, access to reproductive health care and public education.
In his stump speech, Buttigieg also raised concerns about the stability of the economy, which he described as "teetering on the edge," and twice poked fun at the President's interest in purchasing Greenland to laughter from the crowd. Another new line since his last appearance in the state on July 12 in Dover, New Hampshire included a call to address mental health and addiction. "It's not just a problem, it's a crisis," he said.
The section on mental health and addiction followed the release of a $300-billion plan by the Buttigieg campaign on Friday ahead of its weekend swing through New Hampshire, a state ravaged by the opioid epidemic. Former state senator and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Molly Kelly, who introduced Buttigieg in a coup for the campaign on the same day as former Vice President Joe Biden appeared in nearby Keene, New Hampshire, also highlighted the issue.
"Step one before we get to any of the policies is to bring it out of the shadows," Buttigieg said. "How many people here have someone in your family or someone you know as a coworker or someone you care about as a friend who has been impacted by mental health or addiction?"
Almost every hand raised into the air. "Ok, that's just about everybody," he said. "So let's stop talking about this as a specialty issue and allowing it to sit on the margins," he said. "This is all of us."
The high level of involvement from the audience was typical throughout the speech, as Buttigieg rattled off line after line that received rounds of applause. He carried the momentum from the crowd into the final section of his remarks, when he detailed his life-changing experience in the military and pitched his signature policy for one million paid national service opportunities.
The shift from values to policies at the end helped Buttigieg back up his reputation as a problem-solver, someone who would bring "a mayor's eye view" to the White House. "We got to come together and actually get something done," he said. "There's a lot of talk coming out of this White House, harmful talk. More importantly, there's not a lot of action, nothing that's actually making our lives better."
Kelly, an Indiana native who said that Buttigieg "could've gone anywhere he wanted" but "chose to come back home," echoed the same message in her introduction. She said her family used to visit Notre Dame University for football games, but when she returned as an adult, she was saddened that the college town had become "a dying city." She credited Buttigieg for the turnaround. "Pete has a way, and I think all of you know this, of looking at a problem and then solving that problem by looking through a different lens," she said.
Yet with the New Hampshire primary six months away, Buttigieg will have to look through a different lens and solve at least one more problem over the next half-year if he wants to win the Democratic nomination. How will he convince voters to get behind a 37-year-old mayor who is polling in the single digits when Democrats want a heavyweight candidate to take down Trump and a familiar face like Biden is waiting in the wings?
"I think any time you run for office, the process goes like this," he said in response to a question about why he wants to be president. "You look at the office and what it calls for and you look at yourself and what you bring to the table and you see if there's a match."
As the only top-tier candidate who is an outsider, he finished his answer by charting a way forward for the country with cities like South Bend, Indiana as a model for the capital. "This turns out to be a moment where it makes sense to have somebody with governing experience, executive experience, but perhaps experience gathered outside Washington because we're trying to get Washington to look more like our best-run cities and towns rather than the other way around," he said.
This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.
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