Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. | Scott Eisen/Getty Images 2020 Elections Pete Buttigieg hires black outreach director

Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign has hired a black engagement director to improve the mayor's standing among African American voters in the Democratic primary.

Angela M. Angel, a former state legislator in Maryland, will take charge of the Buttigieg campaign’s outreach to black voters. So far, Buttigieg has sought to do so by touting his Douglass Plan, a set of proposals aimed at fighting systemic racism and helping black Americans. But Buttigieg's polling numbers among African Americans have remained low.


Angel said that is because most African Americans don't know the South Bend, Ind., mayor yet.

"The only real struggle that's been so far which is what I'm working on and what we're changing is that a lot of black voters don't know Pete,” Angel said. “So once we get them engaged and they begin to hear his story and begin to hear his plans for the country, we've always had great interactions with folks. So really that's what we're dealing with, getting him in the black community to get him well known and that's what we're doing."

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the polling leader in the Democratic primary, has enjoyed consistently strong support among African American voters so far. But Angel said that Biden is the most “well-known” candidate in the primary field and that his poll numbers with African Americans have been “slowly decreasing” over time.

Meanwhile, Angel said, Buttigieg is becoming “more well-known in the black community.”

Angel pointed to a September Essence poll of black women that showed "other/prefer not to answer" as the top current choice when respondents were offered a Democratic primary ballot test. Biden was next with 25 percent, while Buttigieg registered less than 1 percent support.

The Buttigieg campaign has prioritized hiring people of color. In August the campaign hired Brandon Neal, an alumna of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Democratic Governors Association, as a senior adviser focused on strategy across the campaign. More recently the campaign hired Jarvis Houston, a former chief of staff to a state senator in New York, as its South Carolina state director. With Angel's hiring, the Buttigieg campaign now includes over 40 percent people of color, half of whom are women.

But Buttigieg has faced criticism over his handling of, among other things, a police shooting of a black man in South Bend, which has fueled skepticism of the mayor among the African American community. Angel said Buttigieg has fielded "hard questions" about the shooting.

"Of course there are some folks who have heard about it and have had some questions about it,” Angel said. “I think it's a part of the discussion. There's a lot of candidates that have some issues that people have questions about, but one of the things that I think that everyone that walks away from Pete after having a discussion with him ... says that that he's not afraid to have the hard conversation, he's not afraid to step up and admit where mistakes have been made and talk about the things that he's working on to change the interactions with the police as a whole.”