Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg might feel right at home with Virginia Democrats at their annual gala fundraiser next month.
Tax hikes? Yes. Thomas Jefferson? No. Late term abortion? Yes.
Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, Ind., staked out a series of controversial positions in the past few days: no restrictions on late-term abortion, higher taxes on individuals and businesses, and renaming institutions named for President Thomas Jefferson.
Speaking at a Fox News town hall this weekend, Buttigieg refused to endorse any limits on late-term abortion.
“I trust women to draw the line,” Buttigieg said. “That decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.”
Democrats in Virginia have rallied around legislation patroned by Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, which would have removed a number of safeguards and allowed abortion literally until the moment of birth.
Tran’s bill, and Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam’s defense of it, drew widespread condemnation.
He also advocated at least four new taxes or tax hikes at the Federal level — higher income taxes, a “wealth” tax, a tax on financial transactions and higher taxes on corporations.
Closer to home, Buttigieg told Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last week that it’s time to stop naming things after President Thomas Jefferson because of his hypocrisy on slavery.
“You know, there’s a lot to, of course, admire in his thinking and his philosophy,” Buttigieg said. “Then again, as you plunge into his writings, especially the notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew that slavery was wrong. And yet, he did it.”
Buttigieg acknowledged that all people are ‘morally conflicted,’ but “you know, naming something after somebody confers a certain amount of honor.”
“[T]he real reason I think there’s a lot of pressure on this is the relationship between the past and the present, that we’re finding in a million different ways that racism isn’t some curiosity out of the past that we’re embarrassed about but moved on from,” he said.
“It’s alive, it’s well, it’s hurting people. And it’s one of the main reasons to be in politics today is to try to change or reverse the harms that went along with that. Then, we’d better look for ways to live out and honor that principle, even in a symbolic thing.”
Virginia Democrats renamed their Jefferson-Jackson Dinner fundraiser as the Blue Commonwealth Gala in recent years after criticism of both Presidents Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.