Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign fired back at former Vice President Joe Biden over an ad suggesting the former South Bend, Ind., mayor lacks the experience to be president.
“At this moment, the American people are crying out for something completely different from this classic Washington-style of politics,” said Buttigieg’s National Press Secretary Chris Meagher. “While Washington politics trivializes what goes on in communities like South Bend, South Bend residents who now have better jobs, rising income, and new life in their city don’t think their lives are a Washington politician’s punchline.”
Pete’s on-the-ground experience as mayor, turning around a Midwestern industrial city, is exactly why he is running for president,” he continued. “The vice president’s decision to run this ad speaks more to where he currently stands in this race than it does about Pete’s perspective as a mayor and veteran.”
The statement came in response to a blistering ad from Biden’s campaign suggesting that Buttigieg was too inexperienced to be president. The digital ad compared keystone moments from the Obama-Biden administration with actions Buttigieg took as mayor of South Bend.
“Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Buttigieg have taken on tough fights: under threat of a nuclear Iran, Joe Biden helped to negotiate the Iran deal. And under the threat of disappearing pets, Buttigieg negotiated lighter licensing regulations on pet chip scanners,” the narrator says.
“Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Pete have helped shape our economy: Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which revitalized the economy of the Midwest, and led the passage and the implementation of the Recover Act, saving our economy from a depression,” the narrator adds. “Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.”
The back-and-forth comes after Buttigieg virtually tied with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Iowa’s caucuses Monday, a surprising showing for a candidate who entered the race with nearly no name recognition. He has since enjoyed a surge in support in New Hampshire polls ahead of the Granite State’s primary Tuesday.
Buttigieg has worked to cast himself as a centrist alternative to Biden amid fears the former vice president is a soft national frontrunner. The two candidates have increasingly been competing for similar sets of voters in the primary field in recent months, with some surveys showing Buttigieg’s rise may be directly related to a polling drop for the former vice president.