#Sanders supporters joining hands full

When I asked her if her surrogate work signaled an endorsement, she gestured for me to turn off my audio recorder, refused to answer on the record, but then acknowledged she plans to go on the road with Buttigieg again.Īll of this caution illustrates how sensitive Buttigieg’s candidacy is as a local political issue. Even McBride, who had just returned from a trip to vouch for Buttigieg in South Carolina, the early primary state where a majority of Democratic voters are black, demurred.

Buttigieg’s campaign had promoted it as a “special announcement” from black leaders, but White and others made clear they were not there to officially endorse the mayor. “And I think you can ask a lot of residents in the 3rd District, and they will tell you the same.” “Whether he’s black, white, blue, or green, my relationship with him since I’ve been on council, and what he has done with the council and in my district has been tremendous,” Sharon McBride, another councilor friendly with Buttigieg, said at the microphone moments before the protester stole it. The ruckus went viral on Politics Twitter and accomplished what Buttigieg supporters there that night feared might happen: Theatrics overshadowed their thoughtful, nuanced testimonials. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a person out of South Bend who’s running for president,” Karen White, the city council member who led the meeting, told me a few minutes before it began. Last week, when a Black Lives Matter protester disrupted a public meeting designed to show off Buttigieg’s relationships with some of South Bend’s most respected black leaders, a woman in the audience reached for a cane and raised it over her head with two hands, as if prepared to strike the man before he ran off with the microphone.

#Sanders supporters joining hands full

And two: Any notion that he has ignored these issues or navigated them without advice from the city’s black community is incorrect.īuttigieg’s allies in South Bend’s black community, quiet for months as he defended himself with data that never told the full story, are finally hitting back - in some cases almost literally. One: The anger directed toward Buttigieg over his policies and the slow pace at which results are seen is real and visceral, if not uncommon for a city of South Bend’s size. A few things were clear to me after spending several days in South Bend this month and hearing from more than 15 local activists, pastors, politicians, and others - most of them people of color and many supportive of Buttigieg’s presidential bid. That story - a circular narrative built primarily around poll numbers - can be deeply misleading. And some of the city’s most vocal activists have gone national with their attacks on the young, white, Harvard-educated mayor, who, as you may have heard, is polling at zero among black voters in South Carolina. More than a quarter of South Bend’s 101,000 residents are black.

Their challenges - poverty, a post-industrial economy, a deep mistrust of police - and Buttigieg’s fresh but complicated record at such a local level feed a persistent narrative about his relationship with people of color. SOUTH BEND, Indiana - The people of South Bend never expected to be in the middle of a presidential race.īut Mayor Pete Buttigieg has hurled them all together now into the spotlight.