Report: Pete Buttigieg’s Donors Rewarded with $33M in South Bend City Contracts

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s donors were rewarded with over $33 million in city contracts during his eight years as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, according to a Daily Mail report.

There were 23 companies that donated to Buttigieg’s mayoral political action committee who were later awarded millions in city contracts. Between the companies, their executives, and spouses, $253,750 were donated, resulting in at least $33,280,426 worth of contracts between 2011 and 2019.

Along with monetary contributions to his campaign, the companies gifted Buttigieg alcohol, cigars, and golf trips valued at hundreds of dollars.

Two firms, Abonmarche and Donohue & Associates, received hefty city contracts on the same they donated to Buttigieg.

The Mail reported:

Donohue & Associates president Craig Brunner and his wife Sandra gave $1,000 to the campaign on August 8, 2017, the same day Brunner’s company was awarded a $150,000 job by the city.

Two weeks later on August 22 that year, Abonmarche’s board chairman John Linn gave $2,000 to Mayor Pete’s campaign. The same day, the South Bend BPW approved a $75,700 contract for the company.

Abonmarche executives gave a total $12,870 to Buttigieg’s political funds between 2012 and 2018, and the company won $616,790 in city contracts.

Shockingly, Buttigieg appointed Eric Horvath, a former American Structurepoint executive, as director of South Bend’s Department of Public Works, the entity responsible for granting taxpayer money for construction jobs. Horvath’s appointment to the board came after American Structurepoint co-owner Marlin Knowles donated more than $1,000 to Buttigieg’s campaign in 2011.

The following year, American Structurepoint received a contract for the South Bend Smart Streets Project, which reportedly had a $25 million budget.

Taxpayers Protection Alliance president David Williams called for an investigation into Buttigieg’s political donations and every contract awarded by South Bend’s Department of Public Works.

“Now, as Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg has access to billions, possibly trillions, of taxpayer dollars in infrastructure spending,” Williams said. “This should be alarming and warrant further investigation into every donation made to Buttigieg and every contract given out by his agency.”

Scott Greytak, Director of Advocacy for Transparency International’s U.S. branch, pointed out that Buttigieg’s acts would be illegal under federal law.

Greytak told the news outlet:

I’m stunned if it is true that South Bend Indiana doesn’t have laws on the books that prohibit this. At the federal level, this would be entirely illegal. A federal contractor cannot make a contribution to a candidate, because of the obvious conflict of interest. The laws in South Bend should be just as strong. You’re not going to find a smoking gun in how access, influence and power works in American politics. So campaign finance restrictions are supposed to serve as proxies for preventing corruption. The idea that a company that has either a potential or a pending contract, or recently was a government contractor, is able to so expressly and openly give money to the people involved in those decisions, is a fundamentally corrupt system. I’m stunned that the elected leaders there would want to operate in a system that allows for such potential perception of corruption.

South Bend officials told the Daily Mail that the former mayor “was not involved in the awarding of engineering and construction contracts” and that they were awarded “to the lowest, responsive, responsible bidder per State Law.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it has “consistently made transparency and accountability to the American people a top priority,” when asked about Buttigieg’s mayoral campaign donations.