‘Better than before’: In Concord visit, Pete Buttigieg asks NH to picture a post-Trump future

Chris Masure was a Republican his whole life — that is, until President Donald Trump came on the scene.

Ask him why he changed his mind and he could go on for hours, but it really comes down to four simple words about the president: “He’s a bad person,” he said.

Sitting in the second row at the Concord City Auditorium on Saturday, Masure, an Independent from Manchester, had someone else in mind for the Oval Office.

“Hello, President Pete,” Masure said as he greeted former U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We need you to change history.”

Buttigieg, a Democrat, hasn’t said whether he plans to run for president again. Nevertheless, capping off a three-day visit to New Hampshire, he urged the crowd of 600 to start preparing for life after Trump.

“A day will come, sooner or later, when Donald Trump no longer dominates American politics,” he said. “I’m asking you to picture that day in order to ask all of us a very challenging question: Then what? Then what? What are we going to do?”

Buttigieg won applause from the crowd as he railed against Trump’s tariffs, the dismantling of public education, rising prices and the proposed immigration processing facility in Merrimack.

But simply going back to the way things were before isn’t an option, he said. If the country’s political, economic and social systems were working correctly, “we wouldn’t be here.”

Instead, Buttigieg urged the crowd to work toward the basic necessities that fulfill what he called the American promise of equality, opportunity and personal freedom — a life where people find food in their fridge, commute safely to work and have a roof over their head.

“We need a much better vision than to simply find all the pieces of what this administration smashed to bits and tape them back together and serve up something resembling the old normal,” Buttigieg said. “Our job is to deliver something as citizens and voters to make sure that our government and our country are going to bring us something better — not just better than today, but better than before.”

The game plan

Buttigieg took questions from audience members, which mostly focused on how to reverse Trump’s impact on education, abortion rights and immigration.

Buttigieg’s response: Don’t wait for Election Day.

It starts, he said, with political pressure. After weeks of protests, the Trump administration recently wound down immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, and late last year, Republicans in Indiana rejected the president’s push for congressional redistricting.

One attendee, Bobby, questioned why immigration enforcement, in his view, got so out of hand.

“The ICE issue is out of control,” he said. “It’s horrific, it’s saddening and maddening. Why aren’t officials creating policies to really change proper immigration? … What is actually going to make a difference?”

Buttigieg said legal immigration is something that most people, regardless of their party affiliation, can get behind, though partisan politics and problems have gotten in the way. He comes down somewhere in the middle: “Reasonable” enforcement is necessary, he said, but there also needs to be a better path for immigrants to gain citizenship.

“Things will not get better until we finally close the gap between the level of immigration that our economy requires and the level of immigration that our law permits,” Buttigieg said. “We need to true that up.”

Another attendee, a teacher named Christine, said she thinks progress will require coming together and mending the fractured nature of politics. Buttigieg is someone she sees as a leader in that regard.

“I feel like you are incredibly talented when it comes to speaking calmly and rationally to people with different perspectives,” Christine told him. “I don’t believe that shutting people out and closing the door to people who disagree with us is going forward.”

But, she asked, how can people communicate better to “change hearts and minds?”

Buttigieg said that building a strong coalition is about expansion and inclusion. When he does interviews with conservative Fox News hosts, he said, he imagines that he’s talking to someone from his hometown — someone who he disagrees with, but who he likes.

He also encouraged the crowd to think about how they treat former Republicans like Masure.

“When they start breaking ranks,” Buttigieg said, “the message has to be more along the lines of ‘Welcome aboard,’ rather than ‘What took you so long?'”

Fueling anticipation for 2028

Before his final event in Concord, Buttigieg campaigned for U.S. Reps. Maggie Goodlander and Chris Pappas in Nashua and Manchester, gave a lecture at Dartmouth College and toured the Granite YMCA.

He’s eyed as one of several possible Democratic frontrunners in the next New Hampshire primary, according to a poll by the UNH Survey Center. He came in second in 2020, winning 24.4% of the vote.

Though Masure has doubts about whether the former transportation secretary could win, Buttigieg is the kind of person he wants in the Oval Office.

“Of the eight million people in the world, I want him to be the president,” Masure said. “He has a good heart, a good head, so smart. He’s rational.”

Buttigieg isn’t the only prominent politician to be visiting the Granite State two years out from the primary. Next month, two Democratic governors are scheduled to visit, according to WMUR. Gavin Newsom of California will promote his new book in Portsmouth, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky will host several fundraisers. Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Joni Ernst of Iowa will also headline an event at the Concord Republican City Committee.