Peter Hasson, DCNF

The national co-chair of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign tore into former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on race in an op-ed Sunday.

Biden has “repeatedly betrayed black voters,” Nina Turner argued in an op-ed published in South Carolina newspaper The State.

She hammered Biden’s opposition to forced desegregation busing and his work with segregationist senators and wrote: “Biden didn’t just vote for bills designed to prevent black students from accessing white schools: in a series of personal letters he actively courted pro-segregation senators to support the legislation.”

“Sanders, by contrast, began his work in politics by organizing civil rights protests. As a college student, he helped lead a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in its push to desegregate housing. Sanders participated in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington and was arrested for protesting rampant school segregation in Chicago,” Turner wrote.

“In addition, Sanders has been pushing an education plan that supports local efforts to combat racial segregation,” she added.

“Biden also fought alongside right-wing Republicans to pass so-called ‘welfare reform’ that reduced financial support for low-income families,” Turner wrote, adding:

“Biden echoed former President Ronald Reagan’s dishonest ‘welfare queen’ language and wrote a column conjuring an ugly stereotype of ‘welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous.’”

Voting for Biden would be tantamount to “going backward for black voters,” Turner concluded, while voting for Sanders would mean “we are going forward into a future of empowerment and equality for all.”

Biden’s campaign didn’t immediately return the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment on Turner’s op-ed.

Biden has been a consistent frontrunner in South Carolina, where black voters are a key constituency for Democrats. Sanders, meanwhile, holds narrow leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire in the Democratic presidential field, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average for both states.