South Bend Scandal

A White House senior staff member accused President Pete Buttegieg of moonlighting as Butler University’s men’s basketball coach while campaigning for and serving as Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The Butler coach at that time was thought to be Brad Stevens, current coach of the Boston Celtics.

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The source came to this conclusion while looking over the campaign materials from Buttegieg’s first Mayoral race. These materials included phone records, notepads, posters and advertisements like lawn signs and buttons. The source was tasked by Buttegieg to choose which paperwork and material from his nearly 20 years of political life should be kept and which should be discarded, to keep the Oval Office and Buttegieg’s White House living quarters free of clutter. 

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As the source scrolled through the campaign’s satellite phone, which was used for all campaign business to protect Buttegieg’s cell phone number, they remembered all the South Bend celebrities that denied the campaign’s requests to make appearances at Buttegieg rallies.

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“We called Dean Norris, who starred in Breaking Bad, and Craig Counsell, who scored the winning run in the 1997 World Series,” the source said. “They all turned us down because Pete was so young and unproven at the time.”

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The source eventually found Stevens’ name in the list of calls made. The source was surprised to see Stevens’ name at all.

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“A lot of the campaign staffers, myself included, asked Pete to reach out to Brad,” the source said. “Brad was such a clear choice, given that he was coaching a very popular Butler team just around the corner. He was young, too, so if we got him to make an appearance it could really underscore that message of Pete being young, yes, but talented and a game-changer.”

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“Plus, it wouldn’t hurt that they look a lot alike,” the source added. 

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But Buttegieg was never interested in calling Stevens about an appearance, the source said, and continued to reject the idea so vehemently that the staff stopped bringing Stevens’ name up. Buttegieg mainly rejected Stevens on the grounds that if he was going to be seen with a college coach, it should be a coach from a South Bend school like Notre Dame, which the source always considered a weak argument.

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“A Stevens appearance was focus-grouping off the charts, and no one seemed to care that Butler was a town over,” the source said. “We told Pete that, and by the fifth or sixth time, when we were just, like, ‘this would be a huge coup for our campaign,’ he got madder than I’ve ever seen him.”

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The source assumed Buttegieg wouldn’t have called Stevens, and couldn’t imagine a reason for Stevens to have called Buttegieg, so the source was surprised when they noticed a short call placed to the phone by Stevens.

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Below is a transcript of the call.

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Buttegieg: Hello? Who is this?

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Stevens: Pete, it’s Brad. We need to talk about the arrangement.

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Buttegieg: What the hell are you calling this phone for? You’re not allowed to do that.

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Stevens: I’m sorry, but you haven’t been picking up your cell phone, and I just — I need to know when your road trip ends. I’m running out of food here, and I can’t go out to get more until you get back.

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Buttegieg: Brad, you know the deal. You signed the deal. You cannot bother me with this crap. 

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Stevens: Well, maybe I want the world to know what you did more than I want your job. Especially with you guys all over the national news. The press would eat this up.

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Buttegieg: Brad —

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Stevens: I mean, I expected to be treated like a human being! I’m doing you a favor here, Pete!

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Buttegieg: Fine. I’ll order pizza and wings to your house. I’m sorry. But if you ever call this number again, I won’t be sorry — about anything that happens to you. Now I have to go.

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The source has been trying to figure out Buttegieg’s relationship with Stevens from this call ever since they heard it, a search that should have been fruitful given the source’s current access to nearly two decades of Buttegieg’s paperwork and phone records, but has yielded only one other helpful piece of information.

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“That phone call happened in early April,” the source said. “At that point, Butler was in the Final Four, and on the phone Brad says he was stuck at home, which I assume meant his place in Indianapolis. But I rewatched those last few Butler games, one of which happened just half an hour after the call, and Brad was on the sideline. Or, at least, someone who looked like Brad.”

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“Brad said ‘you guys’ are all over the national news. And I checked — there’s no way he was talking about the campaign, because election day was still half a year away and there was actually relatively little interest in Pete at the time, if you check Google search records. But Butler was in the national eye.”

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“I feel like the pieces of the puzzle aren’t totally clicking yet,” the source continued. “But I think the deal they made was that Pete would impersonate Brad as Butler’s coach, and Brad would have to keep a low profile. That’s the only way I can make sense of the call.”

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“I may be wrong, and I’m perfectly prepared to suffer the consequences,” the source concluded. “I’d like to put more pairs of eyes on this investigation so it can be brought to a conclusion, one way or another. And I’d like to think that President Buttegieg will come out in front of this.”