Buttigieg, who opened a slight lead over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters, faced another attack on that record Saturday in a new digital ad from the campaign of former vice President Joe Biden.

Speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 people at Keene State College, he seemed more contemplative than usual. Or perhaps he was just tired from Friday night’s debate, where he was hit by rivals for his record on race issues as they tried to capitalize on his low support from Black voters.

KEENE, N.H.—Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg added a new message about racial injustice in America to familiar elements of his presidential campaign stump speech as he made his final appeal to voters here Saturday.


Buttigieg said that since the last time he came to Keene, he visited the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., with a former episcopal bishop of New Hampshire.

The bishop showed Buttigieg the statue of Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopalian seminarian and Keene native who was murdered in Hayneville, Ala. in 1965 during the civil rights movement as he shielded a young Black civil rights activist.

“I think it’s especially important to consider that example at a time like this in our country,” Buttigieg said.

He went on to note that February is Black history month. Black Americans do not need to be reminded of the pain of living with systemic racism in this country, he said, “But it is also a time for those of us who have not had their lived experience of systemic racism and discrimination in the way that you do when you are African American in this country to ask of ourselves how we are making ourselves useful as allies.”


“We can always do a better job listening, we can always show up, and if Jonathan Daniels could lay down his life in that cost, surely every single American can make the cause of racial justice in this country our own,” Buttigieg said.

Biden’s ad belittles Buttigieg’s accomplishments on local projects as mayor of South Bend, comparing them to Biden’s efforts on the national state as a senator and vice president. The ad also said that Buttigieg fired South Bend’s first African American police chief and fired the African American fire chief.

Buttigieg spokesman Chris Meagher shot back at Biden Saturday.

"The vice president’s decision to run this ad speaks more to where he currently stands in this race than it does about Pete’s perspective as a mayor and veteran,” Meagher said.

With New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, Buttigieg was unusually blunt in asking Keene voters for their support.

“I am the candidate best prepared to defeat Donald Trump,” he said.

Laura Krantz can be reached at laura.krantz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @laurakrantz.