Buttigieg's approach to courting black voters appears to be working

[DonViejo]

By Jonathan Capehart
Opinion writer

June 17 at 2:02 PM

You can’t win the Democratic nomination without African American support. So, when I interviewed South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg on May 22 at the 92nd Street Y in New York, I asked him about his nonexistent support among African Americans in South Carolina. A poll released a few days earlier showed Buttigieg garnering zero percent of black support in the Palmetto State, where black voters make up 61 percent of the electorate.

“So this is vital, first of all, in order for us to win, but also in order for us to deserve to win, that we have a coalition and supporters that are as diverse as our party,” Buttigieg told me. “What we’re finding with a lot of these early state voters is the challenge is not that they’ve sized me up and they don’t like me. It’s that they don’t know me.” And then he got to the nub of the matter.

“A lot of it is engagement, not just in the public events, but when the cameras are off, having small, quiet engagements with activists, with faith leaders, with people connected to HBCUs, with anybody we can find to not only, obviously, make sure they understand the message of the campaign, which people I believe are responding to very well,” Buttigieg continued, “but also to invite them to shape the campaign in many ways, to ask them to help us think about the right vocabularies, the right ways that we can be a voice for them in this process. And I’m very confident that as we do that, we will continue to see our support grow.”

The latest poll from the Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., shows his approach is working.

Within one month, Buttigieg has already jumped from zero percent support among African Americans to 6 percent in the new Post and Courier poll. “Buttigieg sits between the race’s two main African American candidates — [Kamala D.] Harris, who has 11 percent of the black vote, and [Cory] Booker, who has 3 percent,” the Post and Courier reported in its story about the poll.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/17/buttigiegs-approach-courting-black-voters-appears-be-working/

[left-of-center2012]

1. Al Sharpton seemed impressed with him ...

Al Sharpton seemed impressed with Pete Buttigieg after an interview at Harlem's famous "Sylvia's" restaurant.

One thing I heard Sharpton say on TV was that, after his interview, Buttigieg walked around, spoke with, and shook hands with the other diners at the restaurant.
Sharpton said Buttigieg was the only candidate he had interviewed at “Sylvia’s” who had done that.

[customerserviceguy]

2. The first real test of that

will be the South Carolina primary. If it looks like Pete is still going somewhere, he gets my vote, but if he stalls out at about 10-15%, and Biden remains strong, then that's where I probably go.

[SKKY]

3. Me too. I mean, I all in on Kamala...

...but if Biden is leading and looking strong, I’m with whoever can defeat Trump. Gotta be pragmatic.

[customerserviceguy]

4. If Harris

doesn't get enough African-American support in the SC primary to at least come in second, she's probably at the end of the road this time around.

[SKKY]

5. No doubt.

[Gothmog]

6. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet