Pete Buttigieg in Rochester, New Hampshire on Nov. 15. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

On Oct. 25, Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign released the following:


The Intercept

The link goes to an article in the HBCU Times—HBCU stands for historically black colleges and universities—which is credited to the three prominent black South Carolina figures above “and more than 400 Douglass Plan endorsers.” The article praises the Douglass Plan’s proposed spending programs and legal reforms, arguing that “there is one presidential candidate who has proven to have intentional policies designed to make a difference in the Black experience, and that’s Pete Buttigieg.”

The political usefulness of such a document is obvious for Buttigieg, who is polling very poorly with black voters both nationally and in South Carolina, which holds the fourth Democratic primary/caucus and has a majority-black Democratic electorate.

A problem: When the Intercept dug into the endorsement, it found that two of the three top-line black politicians listed say they never endorsed the Douglass Plan, and that at least 40 percent of the other 400 individuals whose names are listed are white.


Here’s what state Rep. Ivory Thigpen said:

Even though I had had conversations with the [Buttigieg] campaign, it was clear to me, or at least I thought I made it clear to them, that I was a strong Bernie Sanders supporter—actually co-chair of the state, and I was not seeking to endorse their candidate or the plan. But what I had talked about was potentially giving them a quote of support in continuing the conversation, because I do think it’s a very important conversation.

And Johnnie Cordero:

“I never endorsed that plan. I don’t know how my name got on there. No, that’s not true: I know how my name got on there,” Cordero began, before explaining that Buttigieg had emailed him the plan and asked for feedback, which began a conversation with Buttigieg’s staff. “I had some difficulties with it,” Cordero said. … “The long and the short of it was they never sufficiently answered my questions, so I never actually endorsed the plan.”


Buttigieg’s campaign, according to the Intercept’s Ryan Grim, said that rather than asking individuals directly to sign their names to the article, it merely gave those whom it considered to have endorsed the Douglass Plan the chance have their names removed :

The ethics of such a Big Tech–style opt-out approach aside, Cordero and Thigpen’s quotes indicate that the Buttigieg campaign and its “endorsers” may not have agreed on whether they were in fact “endorsers” at all.

And while you’ll note that the Buttigieg release above merely implies that the people endorsing the plan are black, a sharp-eyed Twitter user noticed that the email the campaign sent about the article to its signees claims that the 400 supporters involved are “black South Carolinians.” When the Intercept matched the names of the alleged supporters with publicly available information about South Carolina voters, though, it found that at least 184 of them are white.


Buttigieg, meanwhile, is rolling out TV ads in South Carolina that tout his military experience. He is currently at 4 percent in the Real Clear Politics polling average for the state, 31 points behind Joe Biden and 0.5 points behind billionaire vanity candidate Tom Steyer.

Update, Nov. 15, 2019, 2:54 p.m.: The Buttigieg campaign responded in a statement: