Local photographer captures mayor's spotlight on city

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — experts say South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s highly anticipated memoir, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future set to release next year, could position him as a face of the Democratic Party.

“A lot of folks in the national party are buzzing about him,” said Rick Klein, ABC News political director. “There’s a number of mayors including some very young mayors like Mayor Pete who present a different profile for the Democratic Party moving forward. I’ll tell you he is part of the pretty long short list of people that will be considering the presidency in 2020. No doubt in my mind.”

The mayor says not much is on his radar outside of the city at the moment.

“Most of my most important work is right here in South Bend,” he told ABC 57 News on June 11.

Meanwhile people around Buttigieg believe all the attention he’s getting is putting a big spotlight on this city.

The cover of his new book is a picture of the mayor standing outside of Chico’s Mexican Restaurant on Western Ave.

“Choosing Western to shoot the book cover is 100 percent intentional,” said photographer Jacob Titus. “This is where you see Pete’s vision for how cities can be rebuilt is happening here on Western.”

Watch Titus explain the inspiration behind the cover:

For a few years now, Titus has captured the attention of thousands of viewers on social media by posting pictures of changes happening all around South Bend.

Once the mayor asked Titus to shoot his cover, he knew thousands; maybe even millions of viewers could discover this city on the move.

“It feels very good to have Pete kind of embrace that and embrace the city even as he is on the national stage and may move on to positions outside of the city” he said. “Who knows where he goes in his career. The book is going to be kind of a reference I think of where he comes from and what he thinks about the world so the opportunity to kind of create the visual for that narrative was kind of exciting.”

The book is scheduled to come out on February 5, 2019.


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