Shortest Way Home

by Pete Buttigieg

  We competed for the grant, and won a $42 million package of state matching funds to help with projects in our area that ranged from accelerating the electric train to Chicago, to enhancing parks and trails along the river. I viewed it as a great policy by the state—not just because we were happy to have the funding, but because the focus on regionalism and “quality of place” helped improve the habits of local leaders and economic development players.

  One spring day in 2016, I attended a press event in a former Studebaker factory being renovated into a technology center, with help from the state program. Inside a vast, empty space with high brick walls and broken windows, civic and business leaders gathered around the dream of a different economy, perhaps even a “Silicon Prairie” of data centers in our part of the Midwest. I described the governor’s signature program as “visionary” and thanked him for the work he had done to make it happen. After I returned to my seat, Pence rose and spoke generously about me and our city: “South Bend, Indiana, is so blessed to have an energetic, innovative, forward-looking, creative mayor in Pete Buttigieg.”

  There was plenty to disagree on, as with Mitch Daniels, but once again I hoped that we could stick to common ground. While I objected to Pence’s handling of early childhood education funding, labor policy, refugee resettlement, and several other issues, I saw other opportunities to work together on promoting growth. If Mike Pence had kept his primary focus on economic development, our mutual desire to work across the aisle could have anchored a bipartisan friendship that might continue to this day. Then again, if he had stuck with economics, he would probably still be governor—and would never have become vice president.

  BY THE TIME PENCE CAME to our area to celebrate the Regional Cities funding, working with him had become, for me, a demanding exercise in compartmentalization. I knew that he held the keys to economic policies that would advance our city’s interests and our region’s growth. But he had also revealed himself to be gripped by hard-right social ideology in ways that would make even my old rival, Richard Mourdock, look moderate. It was part of my job to work well with anyone who could help the city. But Pence’s fanaticism was hard to overlook, knowing how it had impacted me as a mayor—and as a person.

  There was a basic fact about Mike Pence that made him deeply different from his predecessor, Daniels—and for that matter his successor, Eric Holcomb—even if all three were committed Republicans: Pence was fixated on social issues. However they felt about these matters, Daniels and Holcomb were generally strategic enough to keep them in the background while focusing on more tangible gains that could make the state better off. Whatever partisan gain they might have secured by playing to their base with red meat on issues like abortion and LGBT equality, they mostly concentrated on the kind of consensus policies that mayors and cities appreciate most, like economic development or road funding.

  Pence, by contrast, could not limit himself to these issues. Maybe it had to do with the years he had spent in Congress, where the Washington environment rewards and punishes various behaviors very differently than for executive branch leaders. He had made his name in the House as a partisan warrior specializing in anti-abortion and anti-LGBT legislation, and even challenged John Boehner from the right for the position of minority leader in 2006. Perhaps this instinct was hard to shake off as he transitioned to becoming a governor. Or maybe it’s just who he is, a deeply conservative politician who had shifted from Catholicism to evangelical Christianity as a young man and has described himself as “Christian, conservative, and Republican, in that order.” Business leaders and mayors in Indiana had hoped that after leaving Congress, as a governor now and a rumored presidential aspirant, he might ease up on divisive social issues and focus on concrete results for the state. But, given his makeup, perhaps a divisive cultural clash was just a matter of time.

  When Mike Pence told me and a few other Democratic and Republican mayors that he was planning to sign the proposed “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” because it was “in my heart that it’s the right thing to do,” I believed him. (Not that it was the right thing to do, of course, but that this was in his heart.) We weren’t there to talk about religious freedom, gay rights, or any other social issue. As president of the Indiana Urban Mayors Caucus, I had come with a small delegation of mayors from around the state, mainly to try to get movement on road funding and make sure the legislature wouldn’t interfere with our ability to use tax increment financing for economic development. In the large, wood-paneled room that is the Indiana governor’s office, he hosted us graciously, warmly greeting each mayor as we stepped onto the blue carpet and saying something nice to each of us as we took a seat at his long conference table. We reviewed local priorities like tax issues and progress on the Regional Cities effort, and then, as the meeting ended, he changed the subject to the proposed bill.

  I wish I could say I made a good effort to talk him out of it, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind. It was also clear that he had no idea what a backlash the bill could provoke, not just from progressives but also from business-oriented Republicans. The language of the bill seemed innocent enough: “a governmental entity may not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” unless there is a compelling governmental interest at stake. But “person” was defined to include companies, building on the legal theory of the 2014 Supreme Court Hobby Lobby case, which interpreted federal law as giving corporations the same religious rights as people.

  Effectively, this meant that any place of business, from a restaurant to an auto mechanic shop, could refuse to serve an LGBT individual or couple, provided its owner cited religion as the motivation for discriminating. It could even be interpreted to protect an EMT or physician denying care to a gay patient. And it would wipe out South Bend’s own local ordinance, passed in 2012, which prohibited workplace and housing discrimination against LGBT residents. Despite the name, its purpose was not to “restore” religious freedom—after all, religious freedom is already guaranteed in the Constitution. The bill’s actual purpose, its sponsors would later reveal, was to legalize discrimination.

  ON MARCH 25, 2015, a photograph appeared showing Governor Pence, seated at his desk in that same office where he had met with our little group of mayors, signing the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” into law. Surrounding him was an anachronistic-looking group of nuns in habits, monks in cloaks, and other figures in religious garb, as well as a few men in suits whom reporters quickly recognized as the best-known anti-LGBT political activists in Indiana. The bill he signed amid that assemblage would remain intact for all of one week before Pence was forced to change course. And the national controversy he detonated from that stately desk would simultaneously destroy his credibility with many American moderates, and set him on an improbable path to the vice presidency.

  The effect on our economic image was immediate and destructive: Pence had set the Silicon Prairie on fire. Until then, Indiana had managed to create a reputation as a somewhat forward-looking place to do business, thanks to a fiscally disciplined state government, low taxes, and livable communities. A nascent tech sector in South Bend was reanimating the once-moribund Studebaker corridor with data centers and start-ups. In Indianapolis, recruiting educated talent was paramount as its life sciences sector grew and was joined by a number of Internet companies drawn to the favorable business environment.

  Our state was known to be a little old-fashioned—until 2018 it remained unlawful here to buy alcohol from a store on Sundays—but the growth in Indiana cities had started to make our state look like an appealingly modern place for people to build jobs, lives, and families. If anything, we had created a sense that Indiana was a place where homespun tradition and cultural modernity might coexist, like the hipster selling small-batch chocolate in a stall next to the old farmer with his eggs and pickles at the Farmer’s Market in South Bend. Part of the appeal of our state was that you could work up an appetite visiting covered bridges or attend
ing a truck pull in Owen County, then fill up on farm-to-table pub food at Upland Brewery half an hour away in Bloomington. Add in the lower taxes and cost of living, and we could even set our sights on luring young professionals from Chicago and elsewhere who were looking for a vibrant but more livable place to put down roots.

  Nothing could be more fatal to this image than for our state to become known as a place that sanctioned discrimination. To many, it called to mind the ugliest demons of our state’s past, hearkening back to the days a century earlier when the Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan became the most powerful political force in our state, with half the members of the Indiana state legislature on its rolls, largely based on a message that emphasized social issues like gambling, adultery, and prohibition.

  Horrified mayors from both parties swiftly joined business leaders to denounce the bill. Greg Ballard, the Republican mayor of Indianapolis, joined four predecessors going back all the way to Dick Lugar in a statement that they were “distressed and very concerned” about the law. The CEOs of our most significant companies, from the engine maker Cummins to the tech firm Angie’s List, put out similar messages. The story quickly went national. On Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” RFRA was the top story, with Colin Jost joking that any company taking advantage of the right to discriminate would be easily recognized by a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign.

  The fallout accelerated through the week. The NCAA signaled it might drop Indiana as a venue for major events, and even NASCAR put out a statement that it was “disappointed.” One of the newest major employers for the Indianapolis region, Salesforce.com, said it would cancel a major planned expansion into Indiana. And, denouncing “outright bigotry in Indiana,” the governor of Connecticut went as far as to ban his employees from traveling to our state on taxpayer funds.

  The next Sunday morning, I was barefoot in sweatpants at home, watching TV before getting dressed for the day’s events. A beleaguered-looking Pence appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, trying to reassure a national audience that the bill was not about discrimination. The interview was a disaster. When Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?” Pence paused, and winced. “George . . .” he began, then sighed.

  “It’s a yes or no question!” Stephanopoulos pressed.

  “Look . . . Hoosiers . . . Come on . . .” the governor stammered, in an almost pleading tone. “Hoosiers don’t believe in discrimination.”

  Still trying to get a yes-or-no answer, Stephanopoulos asked the question again—and then again. No matter how many times he was asked, Pence would not simply say that the answer was no. (Which means he probably believed the answer was yes, but at least knew not to admit it.) One national columnist later described it as “very possibly one of the worst appearances by a governor in television history.”

  The rest of the day, I tried in the back of my mind to reconcile what I had just seen on-screen with the Mike Pence I knew, a man who had always been gracious and decent to me in person, and eager to cooperate on economic matters. Most of my interactions with Republican politicians were exercises in coming to view someone more charitably, building understanding, goodwill, and appreciation as we acknowledged our differences and sought common ground. This time, the reverse was true, as I watched someone I felt I knew well go on to embarrass himself and our whole state. We all knew that the governor was very conservative, and his policy positions on any social issue were rarely a surprise. But was he really incapable of saying—even pretending—that he believed discrimination should not be legal?

  My own moral outrage compounded the fact that he had just made my job, as a mayor intent on growing our community as an inclusive and welcoming place, more difficult. We suddenly appeared backward by association, along with every other community in the state. The bill would preempt local laws like our local nondiscrimination ordinance, and send a message that people living in our city could not expect to be treated equally. Notre Dame, which competes in recruiting not just with other colleges but with other college towns, would have a harder time selling South Bend. If Memorial Hospital needed to attract a specialist in pediatric cancer, or I needed to get a brilliant policy specialist to come work for the city, the state’s reputation would be a new hurdle. And it wasn’t just about high-flying educated experts who might turn their nose up at our state’s license to discriminate. It was also a blow to some of our most vulnerable residents—like a teenager at one of our high schools, already in the incredibly difficult process of facing her sexuality or gender identity, now being told that the state would not protect her rights.

  Jay Leno threatened to cancel an upcoming show here. Our Convention and Visitors Bureau director, Rob DeCleene, fought back tears at a community meeting a few days after the bill passed, insisting that he would continue to try to show that our city was a welcoming place. The alarmed director of our Studebaker National Museum forwarded me an email from one of her top donors, indicating he would likely remove the museum from his will. “I don’t, for a minute, suggest that Museum [sic] is complicitous,” he wrote. “But I do feel it is up to every individual and institution in the state to make a stand against this kind of bigotry. . . .”

  The only way to avoid South Bend getting lumped in with the rest of the state was to be vocal. Soon I was standing in a downtown diner for a quickly assembled news conference with a number of civic voices. The diversity of the group spoke for itself; an activist with dyed-orange hair, a Navy veteran, the president of our baseball team, a Jewish grandmother, and the CEO of a locally based insurance company, all stood at my side as I sought to reassure members of the LGBT community that they were safe in South Bend, and called on the state to reverse course.

  My office distributed stickers reading COME ON IN: SOUTH BEND IS AN OPEN CITY and they quickly began appearing in restaurant and shop windows across town. Businesses from the South Bend Brew Werks to the Blackthorn Golf Club signed up on a list of companies reaffirming their commitment to serve all. And I found myself on national TV and radio discussing just the kind of national social issue that had rarely been on my plate as a mayor.

  Like all furors, this one, too, had its comic dimensions. In Walkerton, about half an hour from South Bend, the owner of a place called Memories Pizza answered a question from a local TV reporter and unexpectedly became the first Indiana businessperson to suggest publicly that he’d use the law to avoid catering a gay wedding. The Internet erupted with angry responses, largely in the form of zero-star Yelp reviews. The content of the posts ranged from simple outrage, to obscene images composed of pizza toppings, to expressions of puzzlement over what circumstances would lead a gay couple to ask a rural pizza place to cater their wedding in the first place. Late-night TV had a field day, with Michael Keaton playing the pizza owner on Saturday Night Live, turning away customers with a wagged finger in a goofy spoof of CNN’s reporting style.

  The reaction quickly went over the top, with threats to burn the place down prompting them to close for a few days—not something likely to inspire the owners toward a more forward-looking attitude on tolerance and equality. As things grew more fierce, I began to feel a kind of regret for the owner and his adult daughter, who probably had no idea that their unguarded words to a local camera crew would make them a national lightning rod. But I needn’t have worried about them. They set up a GoFundMe.com page to cover the costs of their closure and promptly raised $800,000. (The entire property of Memories Pizza, including the land and the building, had been assessed at around $40,000 in value.) Only in America in 2015 could a small-town pizza provider profess prejudice in the name of Christianity before a local TV crew, be mocked around the country on late-night television, and then be made rich beyond belief, all in a matter of days. “Indiana pizza better be good f****** pizza, that’s all I can say,” Jon Stewart opined in disbelief.

  As I watched all this unfold, my mind turned to the people I knew—older conserva
tives, mostly—who were on the road to acceptance of LGBT equality but had sincere difficulty in getting there. What would my next-door neighbors think of all this? If my grandmother, who had voted for Reagan but been turned off by Gingrich, were living, would the contours of this debate make her more or less likely to embrace equality? How could we make it clear that there was no going back on equality, without seeming so ferocious to these citizens that we pushed them straight back into the arms of the religious right? The swift social change was exhilarating, but its suddenness would disorient many Americans, which increased the risk of backlash. As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni noted, “A 64-year-old Southern woman not onboard with marriage equality finds herself characterized as a hateful boob. Never mind that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren’t themselves onboard just five short years ago.”

  But, amid the divisiveness, the RFRA debate actually helped to bring people together across traditional party lines. Because the law’s endorsement of discrimination was so naked and harmful, it aroused opposition from conservatives who may have struggled with something like marriage equality but at least recognized that it’s wrong to mistreat someone because of who they are or whom they love. The activism of longtime progressives and LGBT advocates was crucial, but I believe it was ultimately the revolt of the business Republicans that changed the course of this debate.

  On March 31, five days after the bill passed, the often conservative Indianapolis Star carried a rare front-page editorial, headlined in letters so big they almost took up the entire page:

  FIX

  THIS

  NOW

  By the time the video of Pence’s disastrous This Week appearance was ricocheting across the Internet, it was clear that the bill was untenable in its current form. Desperate to stanch the reputational bleeding, the Republican state assembly hastily composed a clarification to the law, specifying that it could not be used to justify discrimination. The bill’s original backers complained loudly that this “clarification” defeated the whole purpose of the bill, which was true—and revealing. Their objection exposed the deep truth that, contrary to Pence’s protestations, discrimination had been at the heart of their project all along.