Pete Buttigieg leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, but still faces uncomfortable questions

Chris Sikich | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption See what Mayor Pete said at that National Urban League conference See what Mayor Pete had to say at the National Urban League Conference in Indianapolis on Friday, July 26, 2019.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg returned to South Bend following Wednesday's debate leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire but still facing uncomfortable questions about his ability to reach voters of color.

Positioned to contend in the first two nominating contests, the early questions of whether he was launching a serious campaign are gone. Now, it's a matter of whether he can win beyond the first two mostly white states.

His strategy over the next couple of weeks will go a long way toward providing answers, especially as he tries to overcome missteps his campaign has made in South Carolina, the first state with a primary electorate largely consisting of African Americans.

He heads to Iowa to campaign Monday, but will be going to South Carolina the week after Thanksgiving.

"Right now, everybody sort of has a tagline attached to them and Pete Buttigieg does not want that brief discussion to be as the candidate that black people don't like," said Robert Dion, political science professor at the University of Evansville. "I know he has black support and black staff and ideas about how to address racial inequality from a public policy standpoint."

There's evidence both to believe Buttigieg's chances of winning the nomination are hopeless, buried beneath the weight of his problems connecting to black voters, or that they are not nearly as bad as they seem, pundits say.

In the first scenario, black voters question why he demoted his city's first African American police chief, wonder about his role as mayor when a white police officer shot a black man wielding a knife and harbor deep concerns about the inexperience, credibility and sincerity of this young mayor.

In the second scenario, it's hard to say how much attention any voters are paying to the finer details a year before the general election. In other words, African American voters, like the rest of the electorate, just might not know much about the guy.

After all, it's easy to forget he launched his campaign this spring with virtually no name recognition, the largely unknown 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Consider this: He's still polling in single digits nationally and is barely registering in any state outside of New Hampshire and Iowa. A breakout debate performance in October surely helped in those states, but he also rose to the top of the polls after building a robust ground game and after spending long hours driving around his bus to personally meet voters.

It's fair to say he might rise in South Carolina, where he's recently launched a $2 million advertising campaign, and beyond as he continues to build a ground game and visits other states. Buttigieg's South Carolina campaign director, Jarvis Houston, is a Howard University graduate with experience organizing campaigns in African American communities. Buttigieg also has opened new offices and hired more staff.

With more than two months before the first votes are cast, a lot can change. In South Carolina, no one has much support from African Americans outside of Joe Biden, who recently led at 44% in a the Quinnipiac poll. Bernie Sanders was next at 10%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 8% and Kamala Harris at 6%.

Buttigieg was among a dozen candidates with 1% or less. So black voters might have an insurmountable problem with Buttigieg, or they might just need to hear more from him and the rest of the field.

In all, 60% of South Carolina voters who are black said they didn't know enough about Buttigieg to form an opinion.

"The voters of South Carolina are still getting to know Pete," said Lauren Brown, his South Carolina spokeswoman. "And what we’re observing on the ground is the more they learn about Pete, the more they want to know. Many are still very much undecided, but look forward to meeting Pete and hearing more about why he should be their top choice."

In addition to campaigning, wins in Iowa and New Hampshire could go a long way toward building momentum in other states. In 2008, Barack Obama was struggling to win over African American voters in the South before he won in Iowa, for instance.

Nadia Brown, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue University, thinks Buttigieg is spending too much time talking about policy instead of about big ideas, like Obama's overarching message of hope.

"You have to pay attention to understand the nuances of policy," she said. "Talking about big ideas might reach a crowd of folks who are tuning out the minutia. They think the bureaucrats will work all that stuff out."

She also said it's incorrect to assume that black people across the nation are going to vote like black people in South Carolina, or that black voters are a monolith. That being said, she thinks his campaign's stumbles can be overcome in South Carolina, where she thinks voters have proven to be forgiving.

She also said black women are the most reliable group of Democratic primary voters and Buttigieg, like all of the candidates, needs to do more to reach them.

"I don't think it's a lock for Biden," she said. "I think Buttigieg could have done more (at Wednesday's debate) to speak to those voters who are not so enamored with Biden."

She said it was noteworthy Buttigieg spoke about being openly gay, using that to relate to being marginalized.

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"I think he could have done more to thread the needle to explain why there are some similarities between LGBTQ people and discrimination faced by others," she said. "I wanted him to hit the nail on the head for those in the back of the room who might not be paying as much attention."

As the campaign continues, pundits say it's important for Buttigieg to secure endorsements from black community leaders. His campaign had the right idea in South Carolina, they say, but needs to do a better job with the details.

In the Palmetto state, the campaign retracted the endorsements of several elected black leaders after they denied supporting his Douglass Plan for African Americans.

Buttigieg has struggled to gain African American endorsements in general. The New York Times reported last week that six current or former black or Hispanic elected officials had endorsed him, compared to 154 for Biden, 93 for Harris, 91 for Sanders, 50 for Cory Booker and 43 for Warren.

Despite speaking at events in Indianapolis hosted by the NAACP and the National Urban League, it's been a problem even in his own state. Oliver Davis, a prominent African American South Bend City Councilman, endorsed Biden. Davis and Buttigieg, to be fair, have been sparring politically for years, but it does speak to the underlying issue Buttigieg has had in connecting with the African American community in his home town.

Reps. Cherrish Prior and Greg Porter, two prominent Indianapolis lawmakers also endorsed Biden, his campaign announced Friday. The two could not immediately be reached.

Laura Merrifield Wilson, assistant professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis, thinks Buttigieg generally did a good job reaching out to voters of color at the debate, but indicated there's more work to be done.

"The longer impact of his inability to attract African-American voters is important, because it would be virtually impossible to clench the party nomination without their support and, so far, they have been resistant to back Buttigieg," she said. "Endorsements from key African American leaders or specific policy plans that address their concerns could help turn their approval and support towards him."

Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at 317-444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich.