Bob Dandoy, the Democratic mayor of Butler, had a simple way Sunday to describe his past 24 hours.
“Overwhelming — that’s the only word to describe what’s been happening,” he told the Post-Gazette.
Mr. Dandoy said he first learned of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump while at dinner with family Saturday
His first thought there wasn’t much he could do as mayor of a small town. The event was outside the city limits, outside his jurisdiction, and he had no role in security for such events.
“But all of a sudden my phone began to explode with comments” — requests for a statement, other public officials trying to sort out information, news organizations from as far away as Melbourne, Australia, wanting an interview.
Then President Joe Biden called.
“It was pretty crazy,” Mr. Dandoy said. “All of a sudden, I’m on the phone with the president. He was very compassionate and very supportive. He offered the support of the federal government for whatever we needed here as we deal with the fallout and the ramifications of this in the days to come.”
And that’s where Mr. Dandoy’s focus is now: on the days to come, helping the Butler community get through the sudden national stigma.
Whether it’s the city of Butler or Butler County, he said, “It’s Butler, and we’re all in that together.”
“This morning I opened my email and found letters of support from mayors all over the country,” Mr. Dandoy said, but there were “a couple” that were not supportive. They blamed the the community for the shooting, he said. “There were a couple that were disturbing… very unsettling. We know that some of that kind of misguided anger will come at the community.”
But Mr. Dandoy said the community is resilient.
“People know each other,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t get into political arguments and butt heads that way, but I think when you know your neighbor, when you know that person, it doesn’t matter if they’re Republican or Democratic, you’re sitting there and looking and saying, ‘Is this a good and decent person that I want to be my friend, that I want to be strong neighbors with?’ I think we have a sense of that in our community, that that’s the way we approach life.
“You put a face and a personality behind a person, and some of those other things begin to become not as significant,” he said. “I think that’s what we are here and what we will be able to draw on in the days to come as we grapple with the stigma that has now happened to the community.”
Mr. Dandoy said the 13,000 people who live in the city of Butler are more evenly split politically than in the surrounding county, which is predominantly Republican, but “President Trump enjoys a lot of support here.”
“These people that were at the rally were involved in and exercised the most basic fundamental rights that we cherish as Americans: to assemble and to have free speech,” he said. “Any attack on anyone’s rights in that category is an attack on all of our rights, and we’re never going to enjoy that peace and order that we want when this kind of thing continues to happen. … It’s happening to all of us. It's an affront to all of us.”
First Published: July 14, 2024, 5:26 p.m.
Updated: July 15, 2024, 11:46 a.m.
