Will it Last for Pete Buttigieg?
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We are not immune to Mayor Pete Buttigieg's considerable charms.
But the coverage of his surging campaign took on the quality of a rising fever this week, creating a vertiginous quality to a Democratic race that was still in its infancy when the Buttigieg phenomenon sprang up out of nowhere.
“
This is the biggest star-is-born moment since Lady Gaga started singing ‘Shallow,’” gushed
David Brooks in
The New York Times,
practically swooning
in a column entitled “Why You Love Mayor Pete.”
The candidate was
bestowed
the David Remnick treatment in
The New Yorker
, an extraordinary journalistic honor for a relative neophyte.
“The field of Democrats running for President is enormous, but
Buttigieg
stands out for a few reasons,” he wrote. “He’s a Navy veteran, born and raised in the city he governs, so you could say that he has real heartland credibility.”
Beto O’Rourke, the
Vanity Fair
cover boy and last month’s youthful sensation, shuffled away discretely, like a high school jock upstaged at the science fair. Elders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seemed a little grayer this week. The contrast between Buttigieg’s effortless romp and an aging Joe Biden’s public struggle to come to grips with the age of #MeToo politics was almost too painful to watch.
But the time is almost ripe for the media to take a pin to the Buttigieg bubble. The
first takedown
we saw appeared in
Current Affairs
. “
He’s a gay millennial from Indiana, yes, but should he be President of the United States?” questioned Nathan J. Robinson, writing off
Buttigieg’s Harvard years, time in Iraq and career as a McKinsey consultant to little more than a LinkedIn profile.
But the telltale sign that Buttigieg is in for a media hazing
emerged
yesterday in
The Times
. Hearing the call to probe deeper into the Buttigieg story, it produced a (very slender) gotcha story. “Pete Buttigieg Faces Scrutiny Over ‘All Lives Matter’ Remark in 2015,” it reported.
The candidate was approached by the paper to defend the remark at, of all places, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention. His responded with the same effortless sincerity that has won over legions of supporters. “What I did not understand at that time,” he told the paper, “was that phrase, just early into mid-2015, was coming to be viewed as a sort of counter-slogan to Black Lives Matter.
”
And so the week ends with Buttigieg pulled back to earth and forced to confront his inevitable media crucible. The fever hasn’t yet broken, but the doctor has come for a visit.
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Media Mob Meets its Match
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We were taken by pleasant surprise when Buttigieg’s communications director turned out to be none other than the city’s own Lis Smith.
A hard-charging New Yorker, Smith helped get Andrew Cuomo re-elected last year and worked on Mayor de Blasio’s successful come-from-behind campaign in 2013 (she was headed toward the press secretary’s job at City Hall when the tabloids learned she was dating Eliot Spitzer).
The sight of a wide-eyed Midwesterner relying upon a streetwise New Yorker makes for a cool visual. In the face of an avalanche of sudden interest in her boss, Smith has held the media hordes at bay, protecting her fresh-faced principal with the kind of grit that makes us proud back home.
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Quick - no Googling – who’s the parks commissioner of New York City?
It’s Mitchell Silver. But if it took you more than a few seconds, we don’t blame you. Had this been, say, 20 years ago, you would have likely answered Henry J. Stern without needing a pause.
Stern,
who died last week
at 83, served longer than all his predecessors except Robert Moses. As remembrances flooded in, we recalled our days with this quintessential New Yorker. Stern - rumpled and shaggy-haired, had a Woody Allen accent, and was partial to giving out nicknames – his was Starquest. Accompanied by his golden retriever, Boomer (“the wonderdog”), Stern did whatever it took to bring attention and resources to his beloved parks system.
Beaches closed due to medical waste washing ashore? There was Stern in a tiny red Speedo on the day they re-opened, frolicking in the surf to prove the water was safe (an image
Communications Breakdown
still cannot un-see years later).
Stern for years was also a go-to pundit for political reporters, and while he traveled in liberal Democratic circles, he skewed to the right of the save-the-parks crowd. He was a Giuliani guy, and, moreso, an Ed Koch guy. He got into hot water more than once, triggering a racial discrimination suit that resulted in a $20 million settlement.
But he was an icon of his era who loved the city, gave it his career, and nurtured its parks with a passion that benefited all New Yorkers, even those without a Henry J. Stern nickname.
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Early in the morning of April 3rd,
The City
finally debuted
, and New Yorkers had a new source of news about their metropolis.
The website for the baby nonprofit news organization has a wonderfully retro newspaper design, and the first edition had some solid hits – the Manhattan D.A. spending bales of forfeiture money on foreign travel –including four nights at the luxury
Hôtel d’Aubusson
, in Paris - and a story about the city getting soaked by a ferry operator. Good, rigorous, meat-and-potatoes stuff.
There’d been some chatter that the birth was rough, but from the looks of it, it was worth it. New York has a new player in the local news game, joining a fray that includes the dailies, City & State, WNYC, NY1 and others.
As we’ve said before – who says local news is dying in New York?
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Here and There
Comings and Goings in Media and Communications
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Shani Hilton
leaves
Buzzfeed
for
The Los Angeles Times
, where she becomes deputy managing editor for news…
Natasha Bertrand
joins POLITICO as a national security correspondent…
Colin Miner
is promoted to manager, news and content partnerships/national writer at Patch.com…
Bradley Cain
becomes editorial recruiter at Condé Nast…
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“People are calling me asking for their own personal exemptions — even neighbors of mine. I’m not terribly popular at the moment”
– Sam Schwartz, former NYC Traffic Commissioner, and one of the architects of the city’s new congestion pricing plan.
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Have a career announcement for Here and There? A Quotable quote?
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Kirtzman Strategies is a strategic communications and public affairs firm that works with public officials, nonprofits, companies, tech startups and education organizations.
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