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Pete Buttigieg: “Our per capita income was about $18,000.”

Featuring: Pete Buttigieg, Democratic | Former Secretary of Transportation, Former Mayor of South Bend | National

Pete Talks with Rev. Al Sharpton, Live at National Action Network in NYC

Published April 12, 2026 | Video Starts at 08:35

… football season and around tourney time, they maybe imagined that we're this kind of tidy, wealthy, homogenous college town. But when I took office, our poverty rate was around 25%. Our per capita income was about $18,000. Our unemployment was in the double digits. We were hurting. And when we came together to change that, the result was black unemployment fell by more than half. (08:35–08:39)

CLAIM

Asserts that the per capita income in South Bend was about $18,000 when Pete Buttigieg took office as mayor.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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