The Bloomberg campaign has already faced criticism from the LGBTQ community.

Michael Bloomberg has been working to distant himself from past comments, apologizing for everything from remarks defending his implementation of stop-and-frisk during his time as mayor of New York City, to inappropriate “jokes” that reportedly made women working for his company uncomfortable, to using transphobic language.

In fact, only yesterday Bloomberg gave an exclusive statement to NewNowNext apologizing for calling transgender people “it” and “men in dresses,” and revealing that he spoke with trans leaders to apologize to them personally.

Now, a new anti-gay comment could haunt his campaign, this time linked to a high-ranking staffer in a state he needs to win on Super Tuesday.

Above: Bloomberg at the opening of the North Carolina campaign headquarters in Charlotte.

According to reporting from Ben Jacobs, writing for Medium’s GEN, Bloomberg’s North Carolina State Director, and Charlotte City Council member, James “Smuggie” Mitchell made a questionable remark about fellow Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The comments came during an event at the Charlotte campaign office, on February 21, in an exchange between Mitchell and Dwayne Walker, a pastor at Little Rock AME Zion Church.

Jacobs writes:

There was considerable skepticism in the room toward Pete Buttigieg, who, like Bloomberg, is a former mayor who is wooing moderate Democrats. One key difference is that Buttigieg is gay. This came up quite often. When Mitchell, the campaign’s state director, started listing the candidates, he noted, “You have Biden, Sanders, Warren, Butti-Jay.” He then gestured toward Walker and said, “Pastor, you got me saying what you were saying—Butti-Jay,” to laughter in the room. Mitchell added, knowingly, “He said something different—I’m cleaning it up.” Walker cited Buttigieg’s sexual orientation afterward as a concern: “I don’t think I’m comfortable with the husband. I don’t think I’m comfortable with that. It’s going to take me a minute to wrap my head around that.” Walker made clear that he believed “people are free in terms of who they love. I have evolved to that degree.”

“Someone made an inappropriate joke, I tried to diffuse it at the time. I wish I had been stronger in my response,” Mitchell said in a statement provided to NewNowNext by the Bloomberg campaign.

“Targeting candidates with juvenile nicknames based on personal characteristics is a Trump playbook tactic and further evidence Bloomberg is running in the wrong primary,” said Annise Parker, President and CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund, in a statement. Victory Fund has endorsed Buttigieg in the election.

“The state campaign director’s homophobic remarks are not unlike Bloomberg’s past comments targeting lesbians, trans people, women and others,” Parker continued. “For his team to be untroubled by name-calling based in homophobia, and then to repeat it in Bloomberg headquarters to potential supporters, is a blatant appeal to prejudice. It is unacceptable and the Bloomberg campaign must apologize.”

“His team let the homophobic remark stand–and repeated it–Because they made a calculation and determined it better to win votes than stand against prejudice,’ said Elliot Imse, LGBTQ Victory Fund’s Senior Director of Communications, of Mitchell’s comments. “They believed reminding people in the room that Pete is gay would work to their advantage. It’s that simple. And that is why they are refusing to apologize.”

In addition to the “Butti-Jay” comment, Mitchell also gave an interesting description regarding his staff, with Jacobs reporting Mitchell as saying they all fall into one of three categories: “There were those who ’drank the Kool-Aid,’ those who ’like presidential elections,’ and those who were simply drawn by a paycheck—particularly the lavish salaries offered by Bloomberg that started at $6,000 a month for a lowly field organizer.”

Critics, including his opponents for the Democratic nomination, have accused the former New York mayor of attempting to buy his way into the nomination. In addition to the high salaries he’s able to pay, he has blasted out ads on TV, radio, social media, and everywhere in between at a rate that his rivals could only dream of, and his donations to political campaigns and urban renewal programs have been cited as potentially helping him gain key endorsements.

One such endorsement came from Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, who publicly backed him earlier this month, causing upset among progressives in the city, including her daughter. Charlotte benefited from a $2.5 million grant to help the city become more environmentally-friendly under Lyles’ ongoing tenure as mayor.