Fact-checking the eighth Democratic primary debate

The eighth Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, hosted by ABC, WMUR (Channel 9), and Apple News, had seven candidates, lasted 2½ hours — and did not have many statements that merited fact-checking. Here are eight claims that caught our attention. Our practice is not to award Pinocchios in debate roundups.

“The reality is, on my watch, drug arrests in South Bend were lower than the national average, and specifically to marijuana, lower than in Indiana.”

— Former mayor Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg was challenged by moderator Linsey Davis over the fact that when he was mayor of South Bend, Ind., a black resident of the city was four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white resident was. This was a point raised in an Intercept article that said the rate was 4.3 times for a black person than for a white person between 2012 and 2018, compared with 3.5 times in the state of Indiana for that period.