Pete Buttigieg has spent millions without budging in polls of South Carolina Democrats, signaling trouble no matter what happens in Iowa
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — When Pete Buttigieg holds “big rally type events” in South Carolina, “it’s mostly white folks showing up,” he acknowledged ruefully Thursday night. And his struggle to fix that problem has become an existential threat to his presidential ambitions.
It’s not for lack of “fishing” for support, but “folks aren’t biting,” said Brady Quirk-Garvan, a former chairman of the Charleston Democrats who endorsed Sen. Cory Booker before Booker dropped out of the presidential race earlier this month. “When you’ve dropped that much money and you aren’t seeing movement, then that says something about where your base of support is.”
When Buttigieg noted the lack of racial diversity at some of his South Carolina events in conversation with Rye, she jumped in: “That scare you?”But Buttigieg’s campaign also hedges expectations about the state. “Will you see the same results as Iowa? You know, probably not,” said Rep. Anthony Brown, Buttigieg’s national campaign co-chairman, who will continue campaigning for Buttigieg in South Carolina throughout the weekend when the candidate returns to Iowa.
Buttigieg also noted that he’s competing against rivals, like Biden and Sanders, who have had “years, even decades to demonstrate” their support to African American voters. “I didn’t get into running for office in order to comfort the comfortable, and I walked away from a pretty good paying job in order to make myself useful back home,” Buttigieg responded. “That means making yourself useful to everybody who has reason to doubt whether government is working for them.”
Pete Buttigieg at an event on economic struggles in the black community in South Carolina on Thursday with Charlamagne Tha God. | Meg Kinnard/AP Photo
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