Buttigieg takes the debate stage leading in Iowa but mired in controversy in South Carolina

Chris Sikich | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Pete Buttigieg speaks at NAACP event in Indianapolis Democratic presidential candidate South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg spoke at an Indianapolis NAACP event on Oct. 4, 2019.

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg's night-and-day campaigns in Iowa and South Carolina clearly show both why he's such a formidable opponent and also why he remains a longshot to win the nomination.

In Iowa, he surged into first place after hitting Elizabeth Warren hard on how she would pay for her massive Medicare expansion. In South Carolina, he's navigating troubling accusations that his campaign grossly overstated black support for his sweeping platform for African Americans.

Here's what it means in the short term. For the first time, he's going to have a target on his back when he walks onto the debate stage Wednesday in Atlanta. The three frontrunners can no longer afford to mostly ignore him as little more than a smooth-talking Midwestern curiosity, pundits say.

And for the long term, if he emerges from the debate politically unscathed, he's going to have to find a way to convince voters of color that he has their backs.

"In the past debates, he's come out swinging and he's landed some punches," said Chad Kinsella, assistant professor of political science at Ball State. "As his popularity has grown, I don't think they're going to let him go. I think a couple of people will come after him and bring him back down to Earth."

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A campaign spokesman for Buttigieg declined to comment on debate strategy, other than to say the mayor will be prepared.

Buttigieg's record on race clearly remains his greatest vulnerability. When a white South Bend police officer shot a black man wielding a knife in June, the mayor's bumpy relationship with African Americans was exposed. Things haven't much improved.

African Americans make up a significant portion of the Democratic base and as long as he's polling at near zero percent with black voters, his path to the nomination remains murky at best.

He clearly knows he has to make up ground, recently announcing a $2 million advertising purchase in South Carolina, where the campaign has been heavily promoting his Douglass Plan, named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and where he remains mired in fifth.

Things are not going well. Prominent African Americans in South Carolina are accusing his campaign of embellishing black support for the Douglass Plan.

Their criticism stems from an open letter published Nov. 15 in the HBCU Times, purportedly written by 400 South Carolinian supporters of the Douglass Plan, including several elected officials, pastors, business owners and students.

"Together, we endorse his Douglass Plan for Black America, the most comprehensive roadmap for tackling systemic racism offered by a 2020 presidential candidate,” the letter states.

The trouble started soon after publication. Several elected leaders denied they had endorsed the plan, according to The Intercept, a digital news publication. A review by the publication showed many of the 400 supporters were white and some lived out of state. The Intercept also reported a woman in a photo used to promote the platform lives in Kenya, and had never heard of the plan.

According to the campaign, some leaders withdrew previously made endorsements and their names were removed. The list of 400 people was intended to show biracial support, the campaign said, not just endorsements from African Americans. And the photo is a stock image, the campaign said.

“Our campaign is working to build a multi-racial coalition, and we sought and received input from numerous black policy experts and advisers to create a comprehensive plan to dismantle systemic racism: the Douglass Plan," the campaign said in a prepared statement. "We asked a number of black South Carolinians, as well as South Carolinians from many backgrounds, to support the Douglass Plan, and we are proud and grateful that hundreds agreed to do so."

Buttigieg scored by hitting Warren on spending. But how will he pay for his own plans?

Larry Sabato,the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the rollout has been sloppy but it's not a campaign killer. Still, he said Buttigieg will have to weather a barrage of criticism.

The more important question, he thinks, is whether Buttigieg can win over voters of color. In addition to the polls of African Americans, Sabato referenced a survey in California where the mayor had little support among Latinos.

"He doesn't just have a black problem," Sabato said. "He has a brown problem."

At Wednesday's debate, Buttigieg's response to the controversy might reveal his strategy with African American voters moving forward. In the June debate, he took responsibility for the ongoing tensions between his police department and black citizens, saying "I couldn't get it done."

That moment aside, Buttigieg has had it pretty easy at the debates so far. He's taken on the front runners, made his points on policy, while easily swatting away attacks from lower-tier candidates such as Eric Swalwell, Julián Castro, Beto O'Rourke and Amy Klobuchar.

But Wednesday, pundits don't think Warren and Bernie Sanders, in particular, can stay on the defensive as he continues to hammer away at their more progressive positions, most notably on health care.

Elizabeth Bennion, a politics professor at Indiana University-South Bend, said there's some risk that attacking Buttigieg could simply raise his profile even higher. But she thinks the frontrunners will want to slow down his rise heading into Iowa and New Hampshire.

"As Warren, Sanders, and (Vice President Joe) Biden compete with Pete Buttigieg to win the first-in-the-nation caucus in Iowa, I expect that the three national frontrunners will be more forceful in drawing distinctions between themselves and Mayor Pete," she said. "The candidates head into the November debate with many Iowa, and national, voters undecided."

Biden might be the least likely to target Buttigieg. In fact, pundits think the former vice president would prefer Buttigieg win Iowa over Warren, who had been leading. Biden's support among African Americans remains strong, positioning him for a comeback in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday, when several southern states vote. From that perspective, Warren is Biden's more significant long-term threat.

Then again, Biden might be tired of Buttigieg's strategy to replace him as the moderate candidate.

"Somebody will go after Buttigieg," Sabato said. "I don't know which one, maybe all of them. Warren seems the most anxious to do so."

Warren and Buttigieg have clashed on Medicare for All. She released a $20.5 trillion funding proposal after Buttigieg and others criticized the lack of details in her proposed expansion. Meanwhile, progressive groups have dismissed Buttigieg's Medicare for All Who Want It counterproposal as not bold enough.

There's cause to think Buttigieg would win that fight. Sabato said he recently commissioned a study that showed Medicare for All was a loser among voters in Congressional races in 2018. Warren notably didn't talk much about her plan to expand Medicare at a recent trip through Iowa, which might be a sign she knows it's troubling for some Democrats.

Unions, in particular, remain a strong force in the Democratic base, and they fought for health-care benefits as part of their salaries.

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Progressive groups have taken another tactic that might foreshadow what happens at the debate. Pointing to past tweets and statements, they accuse Buttigieg of flip flopping, once supporting but now opposing Medicare for All. While Buttigieg's campaign pushes back on that, being saddled with the flip-flopper moniker has hurt others, perhaps most notably Al Gore in 2000.

It's also possible Biden, Sanders and Warren continue to ignore Buttigieg, for the most part. If that happens, Sabato said it's a sure sign that their internal information says he's still not much of a threat beyond Iowa. If that's the case, Buttigieg might be positioned to continue to attack the leaders while fending off the rest of the field. And be sure, the rest of the field is likely to continue to target him.

"We'll have to see what their internal calculations are," Sabato said of the frontrunners. "For the second-tier candidates, there is a lot of jealously and resentment of Buttigieg. They see him as arrogant and inexperienced."

In that scenario, his biggest vulnerability remains his first: He remains the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend.

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