Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg will return thousands of dollars raised and contributed to his campaign by controversial former City Hall attorney Steve Patton, who fought against the public release of the Laquan McDonald police shooting video.
Patton, who was former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s top attorney for nearly six years, had given a maximum $5,600 contribution to Buttigieg earlier this year and had bundled money from other donors, the campaign confirmed. The high-powered lawyer was scheduled to be one of 17 hosts of a fundraiser for Buttigieg on Friday afternoon at the home of Dan and Anke Tierney, according to a copy of the fundraising invite obtained by the Tribune.
The South Bend mayor’s campaign quickly announced it would return the money after the Associated Press reported plans for Patton to co-host the fundraiser, noting his ties to the McDonald case. Buttigieg’s outreach to black voters has been complicated in part by his handling of a police-involved shooting of a black man in his city.
“Especially as the mayor of a city that has had a lot of anguish over police-community relations, I believe very strongly that transparency and justice for Laquan McDonald is a lot more important than a campaign donation,” Buttigieg said during a University of Chicago event Friday afternoon. “I learned about that this morning, and within about an hour, he was no longer involved with the event or the campaign.”
Buttigieg’s campaign did not say how much money would be returned in addition to Patton’s contribution or whether the campaign had been aware of Patton’s ties to the McDonald case. Patton, who has returned to private practice at the Chicago law firm Kirkland & Ellis, could not be reached for comment.
Buttigieg addressed the issue Friday afternoon during an event at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park during a conversation with David Axelrod, the veteran political strategist who was a senior aide to former President Barack Obama and now heads the university’s Institute of Politics.
In a bit of a lecturing tone, Axelrod told Buttigieg that part of raising money is “creating the infrastructure to evaluate donors to avoid stories like this. This is a growing pains story.”
“That’s not an unfair way to put it,” the 37-year-old mayor responded. He noted his campaign started with four people in January and had exploded to “at least 100 times that.”
“I’d hire one more and put them on vetting,” Axelrod quipped, as the crowd laughed.
There was, however, some irony in Axelrod saying the campaign should have caught and returned Patton’s contribution, since the attorney served as a top aide to one of Axelrod’s longtime friends — Emanuel.
The McDonald controversy blew up after Emanuel’s administration was ordered by a Cook County judge in November 2015 to release the graphic video of the shooting after Patton fought in court for most of a year to keep the video under wraps, citing ongoing investigations. Patton also led the city’s effort to reach a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family, despite a lawsuit never being filed.
The video showed then-Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times in the middle of a Southwest Side street as the black teen walked away from him holding a small folding knife. Then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez charged Van Dyke with murder the same day the video was released.
The chain of events led to weeks of street protests, accusations of a City Hall cover-up and calls for Emanuel’s resignation. It also led to a federal civil rights investigation that concluded there had been a pattern of misconduct and use of excessive force within the department.
Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to nearly seven years in prison. Before leaving office last year, Emanuel’s administration reached an agreement with then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan for federal court oversight of reforms within the Police Department.
Having his name tied to the Laquan McDonald scandal marked an unwelcome headache for Buttigieg, who has struggled to gain traction with black voters in critical early states such as South Carolina. Plus, it brought another round of attention to Buttigieg’s own handling of the fatal police shooting of Eric Logan, a black robbery suspect who authorities say was armed with a knife.
There was no police camera footage of the shooting, which remains under investigation, and the mayor spent much of July back in South Bend holding meetings with community members, including an emotional town hall that placed a frayed relationship with some black residents on full display.
Friday’s controversy over Patton’s contribution marked the second time this fall Buttigieg has had a visit to Chicago overshadowed by his campaign’s challenges to reach out to black voters.
In September, he held a grassroots event at the Harold Cultural Center in Bronzeville, a venue named for the city’s first African American mayor in a historic, predominantly black South Side neighborhood. The crowd that turned out at the event, however, was overwhelmingly white, another campaign misstep that put a spotlight on his difficulty in appealing to black voters.
“Find the people who don’t look like most of you in this room and let them know they have the chance, not just to support this campaign, but to shape it,” Buttigieg pleaded with the crowd that night.
Asked after the University of Chicago event about the Patton contribution distracting from his campaign stop, Buttigieg responded, “It’s frustrating.”
“I’m going to figure out how it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Buttigieg said. “These things do happen, and you accept responsibility and keep going.”
The mayor said watching the fallout from the McDonald shooting in Chicago emphasized to him the “importance of transparency and the importance of information.”
“I think the problem was really compounded by the way that information wasn’t getting out,” Buttigieg said. “It’s also just a reminder of the deep pain that is driving the mistrust between communities of color and law enforcement that does unspeakable harm in so many different ways and that the next president has to understand and be committed to doing something about.”
Patton had been set to welcome Buttigieg at a 5 p.m. fundraiser at the home of Dan Tierney, the president of Chicago venture capital investment firm Wicklow Capital and co-founder of the high-speed trading firm Getco. Like Patton, Tierney has been an ally of Emanuel, contributing more than $138,000 to the former mayor as he prepared a bid for a third term that he later abandoned.
Buttigieg’s campaign required $2,800 to co-host the event and $1,000 to attend as a supporter.
The presidential hopeful, who has consistently polled among the top four candidates in the Democratic primary, also was scheduled to attend a second fundraiser Friday in Chicago, where he has a major campaign office in the South Loop and frequently drops in to raise cash. That event was to be hosted by another 18 individuals, with entry fees as low as $100 up to $1,000 to earn the status of co-host.
bruthhart@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @BillRuthhart
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