Lightfoot headed to Iowa to interview ‘Mayor Pete’ — not to endorse him

With the Iowa caucuses just over two months away, Mayor Lori Lightfoot will be there on Friday to interview presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg — but not to endorse or campaign for the South Bend mayor.

Lightfoot will interview Buttigieg as part of a presidential forum hosted by Accelerator for America Action and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The forum will pair mayors who have not made presidential endorsements with five Democratic presidential contenders: Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Tom Steyer and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Booker is a former mayor of Newark, where Garry McCarthy served as police chief before Rahm Emanuel brought McCarthy to Chicago.

Lightfoot didn’t choose to interview Buttigieg. The selection was made for her. Lightfoot’s questions to “Mayor Pete” will apparently follow topics suggested by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Democratic presidential contenders have been courting Lightfoot, a rising star in national Democratic circles because she seemingly came out of nowhere to become Chicago’s first African American female and openly gay mayor.

“She’s trying to get to know as many of the candidates as possible, so she can make an important decision,” Lightfoot’s political director Dave Mellet said Thursday.

Mellet said the timing of a Lightfoot endorsement “depends on when and whether she feels strongly about” any of the candidates she meets.

“She really liked Kamala Harris. She had constant conversations with her and was keeping a close eye on her candidacy,” Mellet said of the California senator who dropped out of the race this week.

Lightfoot is in no rush to make an endorsement. The March Illinois primary comes early enough to potentially have an impact in minting the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.

Buttigieg and Lightfoot, both openly gay, saw each other in February at an Equality Illinois gala in Chicago and had a one-on-one meeting in July when Buttigieg was in Chicago for a fundraiser.

Lightfoot met Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, when they were both in New York for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser June 17 targeting gay donors.

In September, Lightfoot joined Chasten Buttigieg in headlining a Chicago fundraiser for the LGBTQ Victory fund. The organization endorsed Lightfoot for mayor.

During an interview with Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet, Buttigieg said he met with Lightfoot in July to “see how she was doing and then also to learn from her experience.”

He described the mayor as “somebody who has been very much in the middle of some of these questions about race and community and policing that have been very much on my mind.”

Buttigieg has surged to the top of the polls in Iowa, but he has struggled to appeal to African American voters.

As the mayor of a small city, he is grappling with a lack of diversity in the South Bend Police Department and a summer shooting involving a black man and a white police officer.

Prior to the presidential forum at the Cedar Valley SportsPlex in Waterloo, Iowa, Lightfoot will make two college visits.

She will speak at Drake University in Des Moines at the invitation of the LGBTQ student body and Black Student Union and talk about the importance of the elections and the 2020 U.S. Census at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.

The Iowa caucuses that kick off the 2020 presidential sweepstakes will be held Feb. 3.