‘Help me get it’: Buttigieg courts black voters’ support
Rebecca Morin
Pete Buttigieg knows he has work to do to win black voters’ support.
Last month during a visit to Claflin University in South Carolina, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, conceded he was concerned that mostly white people attend his rallies.
“In order not just to win, in order to be deserving to win, I’ve got to be speaking to everybody,” he said during an interview with political commentator Angela Rye.
So when the event ended, one of Buttigieg’s most prominent black supporters canvassed the room.
Rep. Anthony Brown of Maryland, the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse Buttigieg, told USA TODAY that some in the audience said they liked that Buttigieg leaned
into talking about community policing and challenges across America, including those in his hometown.
“The response is ‘he’s real, he listens,’ ” Brown said. “There’s a real appreciation that he leans into it, shares his experience as a mayor, but a vision that is inclusive of everybody.”
Buttigieg over the past year has risen from an ambitious small-city mayor to a top tier Democratic candidate in what was once the largest and most diverse ever presidential field. Despite his popularity in several early states, and even nationwide, he has struggled to make inroads with voters of color.
Buttigieg has turned to a handful of black surrogates to help garner support with African American voters ahead of Saturday’s South Carolina primary – a key contest to gauge black voter support – and in several Super Tuesday states. The pressure is especially high to win over voters of color following Buttigieg’s distant third place in the Nevada caucus, the most diverse contest yet where 17% of Democrats who participated are Latino.
It’s still unclear whether those surrogates will be enough to gain the broad support Buttigieg will need to propel him into the Democratic nomination.
Buttigieg has “got a lot of ground to make up in a short period of time,” said Bruce Ransom, chairman of policy studies at the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University. “He’s in single digits with African Americans. (Other candidates) are in double digits around. He’s not there yet.”
‘Meet voters where they are’
Black voters comprise nearly 60% of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate, making the state a crucial test of candidates’ ability to energize African Americans in other elections.
Brown has campaigned for Buttigieg in several early voting states, including Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina. He has stopped by local barbershops, churches and visited Claflin University, a historically black college, to campaign for Buttigieg.
“First of all, you got to meet voters where they are,” Brown said.
Brown said he talks about Buttigieg’s Douglass Plan when he’s campaigning. The plan, named after the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and labeled new steps to diversify the teaching profession, dedicating more resources to HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions, and doubling funding for federal grants for states that commit to criminal justice reform.
But the rollout of the Douglass Plan was met with criticism from some black leaders. A stock image of a black woman and a young boy was used, but it was found out later the woman was from Kenya. Buttigieg also was criticized for sending out a letter reportedly signed by 400 black leaders in South Carolina supporting the Douglass Plan, but several said their support for the plan was misconstrued as an endorsement for the former South Bend mayor.
Johnnie Cordero, chair of the state party’s Black Caucus, was initially listed as a signer of the letter. But his name was later taken off after he said he did not endorse the plan.
“It’s presumptuous to think you can come up with a plan for black America without hearing from black folk,” Cordero told the Intercept at the time. “There’s nothing in there that said black folk had anything to do with the drafting of that plan.”
Cordero has since endorsed billionaire activist Tom Steyer.
For most of the campaign, Buttigieg has stayed in single-digit support with black Democratic voters. According to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll released in February, a combined 28% of black voters said they are comfortable or enthusiastic for Buttigieg’s candidacy, while 41% have reservations or are uncomfortable.
Comparatively, a combined 69% of black voters said they are comfortable or enthusiastic for former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden also holds a significant lead in the latest South Carolina primary polls.
But Quentin Hart, who made history as the first African American mayor of Waterloo, Iowa, is looking to build enthusiasm for Buttigieg, whom he met at a mayoral conference in Las Vegas several years ago.
Hart said the two bonded at the Las Vegas mayoral conference during a 30minute discussion of “how we can empower African Americans in our communities, Latinos in our communities” in one of their first-ever conversations.
“We have a lot of people … that are frustrated that politics and resources stay at the top and don’t reach 95% of us that are below the top 5%,” Hart said at a rally in the south side of Des Moines, which was followed by a roar of cheers. He went on to tout Buttigieg’s platform to fight back against systemic racism, the Douglass Plan.
“I think it takes the mayor’s perspective to make sure that we don’t forget about everyday people,” he later said.
Winning big
Buttigieg’s strong finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire – two states that are mostly white – raised questions about whether he could continue that momentum to more diverse states. He had a lackluster showing in the Nevada caucus, which Sen. Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly won. Nevada’s population is close to 30% Latino and around 9% African American. Buttigieg placed a distant third behind Biden there.
But the former mayor’s campaign advisers said they believe that once voters of color see that Buttigieg can win, they will begin to support him.
Deputy campaign manager Hari Sevugan said at a Bloomberg News roundtable in February that voters, particularly voters of color, are “looking for someone who can win.”
“In order to show that you can win, you have to win,” he said, adding that “once we do well” in Iowa and New Hampshire it will prove they have a strong coalition going forward. “That’s a powerful signal across the country, including to communities of color, that this is the guy that can beat Donald Trump.”