Two weeks before he would appear at the Iowa State Fair, surrounded by a sea of whiteness, Bernie Sanders was at the Italian restaurant Chi Spacca, in Hollywood, trying to shore up another key constituency. The presidential candidate, who remains a serious contender for the Democratic nomination despite having slipped in the polls, was having lunch with 25 or so creatives—writers, musicians, artists and social-media mavens, most of whom were African American or Latino.

The topics of conversation were typically Sanders: Medicare for All, student debt relief, and criminal justice reform. But for keen political observers, the Chi Spacca strategy session—described by one attendee as closed-door and “definitely off the record”—also had another goal: eating into Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s base of support with black voters—voters who are, by almost any estimation, the most reliable pillar of the Democratic base.

It was a somewhat unusual scene for Sanders, who seems to dislike the glitterati, never mind people in general, and who has studiously avoided the sort of $2,800-a-plate parties that are a staple for other candidates jetting in and out of Hollywood. Like Elizabeth Warren, Sanders has mostly eschewed big-dollar donors in New York, L.A., and Silicon Valley in favor of a more national network of so-called ordinary people who give $20 or $30 a pop. (Biden and Harris have a little more than a quarter million individual donors. Sanders has nearly three times that.)

Sanders prefers to wag his finger, to be earnest, to lecture—about inequality, structural imbalances, socking it to the billionaire class. He seems permanently furrowed, slovenly, cantankerous. He has no time to glad-hand. But there he was at Chi Spacca, where the tomahawk pork chop runs $90, and the beef Florentine is $195. Sanders ordered steak.

The campaign picked up the tab. During his last presidential bid, Sanders was accused by Black Lives Matter activists of neglecting race relations and criminal justice reform. He appears to be trying, this time, not to let that happen again. The point of the meeting, said Ferrari Sheppard, an artist and musician who was there, was to hear from attendees about the struggles faced by the black and brown communities.

On criminal justice reform, student loan forgiveness, and health care, there was general agreement, Sheppard, 36, said. “He has something that’s really attractive to young people, which is a grassroots demeanor,” said Sheppard, who, with Mos Def, makes up the hip-hop duo Dec 99th. “He’s eating his steak while he’s talking to you. He says, ‘Hold on while I chew this.’”

When it came to the Middle East, things got awkward. Sheppard, speaking from his studio in L.A.’s Arts District, said rapper Vic Mensa “brought up the Palestine conflict, which kind of made the room tense, not because of us, but because of Bernie and his people, who got quiet, and Bernie deflected the question and moved back to domestic issues.” Sheppard said he didn’t care for Sanders “glossing over the United States’ continual glossing over [of] the Israeli occupation.… That just reminded me that you’re up against this huge machine.”

Mensa, who had headlined a Sanders fund-raiser the night before at Hollywood’s Montalbán theater, said he remains a steadfast supporter. What matters most, said Mensa, 26, is Sanders’s record fighting for civil rights, which stretches back to the 1960s.

For many black millennials, including Mensa, the No. 1 issue is criminal justice reform—the easing of mandatory minimum sentences, narrowing sentencing disparities between crack- and cocaine-related crimes, and the elimination of bail, among other provisions. But the 2020 election is a quandary for the nation’s 30 million eligible black voters, who have been told they must choose between a nominee who can win white, working-class voters in the Upper Midwest and one who will do something about the 500% increase in the prison population over the past four decades. The politics are complicated: A plurality of black voters currently support Biden, the front-runner in the race, who helped author a 1994 “tough on crime” law that has been accused of contributing to mass incarceration in the 1990s. (Sanders has said he regrets voting for the bill.)