Mueller easily wins Democratic nomination for South Bend mayor, to face Upchurch in fall

SOUTH BEND ― South Bend Mayor James Mueller has turned back the primary challenge of current Common Council member Henry Davis Jr. and will face Republican nominee Desmont Upchurch this fall.

Mueller gathered with a crowd of supporters Tuesday night in Corby's Irish Pub, the same place where he celebrated his first primary victory in 2019 as Pete Buttigieg's handpicked successor.

He has largely stuck with the message that he's continuing the progress jumpstarted by Buttigieg. But now Mueller has more than three years of experience to show for it and a team of council members who support him.

"That's one thing to have an endorsement, and (Buttigieg) is a good friend, but it's another thing to now stand on my own with a team around me," Mueller, a celebratory beer in hand, told The Tribune. "Again, this team ran four years ago. We weren't high school friends. We didn't know each other before working together in city government."

The first-term councilors who support Mueller — Sharon McBride, Sheila Niezgodski, Troy Warner, Rachel Tomas Morgan and Canneth Lee — all won their primary bids Tuesday. Karen White, a councilor for two decades who supports Mueller, also earned a Democratic seat.

"When you look at the results, it's across the board," Mueller said. "It's not just the mayor's race. It's not just the clerk's race. It's the council races across the board. South Bend knows that we've turned a corner, knows that we are in a place that we haven't been in a long time and knows that the future is bright for us."

Davis headed a cohort of Democrats who sought to oust the incumbents that rallied around Mueller. Apart from one veteran challenger who won a council bid, Davis and his allies failed to convince enough voters that the current administration wasn't meeting the moment.

"I sign up to win. I don't sign up to lose," said Davis, a former competitive athlete. "And so yeah, there is a disappointment here. There's disappointment here when you think about schools closing … There's disappointment that crime is really high. Just down the street, we had an 11-year-old who died in front of a home."

“It's disappointing," Davis added, "that people do not respond with a rebuke of the system that they live in."

From the start, both Mueller and Davis framed the race as a referendum on South Bend's trajectory.

Mueller asked for the votes of those encouraged by the city's strategy. Davis asked for disillusioned voters fed up with the status quo to choose him.

Mueller says South Bend has turned a corner. He nods to population growth and more than half a billion dollars in private investment since he took office in 2020, according to building valuation records. He credits the South Bend Police Department for recently achieving full staffing to boost patrols during a violent year. He's noted the city's support for two social service programs that stood to lose county funding, the mental health crisis center and the low-barrier homeless shelter Motels4Now.

More: How police review office director Charles King aims to bridge the gap between police, residents

Davis, who allied with outsiders challenging his Democratic council colleagues, said Mueller's policies on housing and crime are "center-right." He pointed to his own role passing progressive legislation, including the creation of the Community Police Review Office. He criticized the "tax handouts" to large developers that fueled downtown growth.

And, he wrote in a recent Tribune viewpoint, "My opponent is unpopular."

In the end, however, Mueller proved more popular than Davis with South Bend voters by a greater than 2-to-1 margin. Mueller received 4,880 votes, or 68% of the total cast. Davis received 2,349 votes, or 32%.

"As someone who's 40 years old, born and raised in South Bend," Mueller said, "this is the best time to be mayor of South Bend in my lifetime. Because for most of my lifetime, we were figuring out, 'How do we turn the corner?'

"Now we've turned the corner," Mueller said, noting that progress occurred despite the pandemic. "And we have all these opportunities in front of us to take advantage of."

Mueller advances to face Upchurch, the only Republican on the ballot. South Bend voters haven't elected a Republican mayor since Lloyd Allen won his second term in 1967.

Just 10,406 voters citywide cast ballots in Tuesday's primary, which is down from the nearly 12,000 who voted in May 2019, the last mayoral election. There were nine Democratic candidates in that year's race, though.

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend Mayor James Mueller easily wins Democratic primary election