The most interesting Democrat running for president may just be Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old, gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
He visited Boston earlier this month, appearing before a crowd of more than 1,000 at Northeastern University. In more than a few moments, he was downright impressive.
Facing a question from a tenant-rights activist complaining about Northeastern fueling “gentrification,” he pivoted to an answer about affordable housing that included the words “rethinking exclusionary zoning.”
That is a big deal coming from a Democratic politician. Left-leaning economists and journalists such as Eduardo Porter, Paul Krugman, and Lawrence Summers have been making this point about zoning restrictions artificially constraining the supply of housing. It’s ideologically consistent with libertarian aversion to regulatory interference in free markets. But politicians have been slow to seize the issue.
And he talks about freedom. “We need to start to talk about freedom more on our side of the aisle,” he said, in response to a question about a faculty labor union, suggesting that benefits such as retirement and health care should move away from “being entirely dependent on your employer.”
Early though it is, though, it’s not too early to say that having Buttigieg in the presidential race urging “talk about freedom more” has the potential to be a positive development not just for the Democrats but for the country, writes Ira Stoll.
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