ROUND O, S.C. — While Pete Buttigieg sat in a semicircle with six entrepreneurs at a black-owned winery, a rooster crowed nearby, its cock-a-doodle-dooing drowning out the South Bend, Ind., mayor’s explanation of how he would help small-business owners of color. This wasn’t the Mayor Pete phenomenon that’s taken Iowa by storm. Following stinging criticism about his lack of support from Democrats of color, Mr. Buttigieg this week embarked on a four-day, three-state tour across the South. Rather than play to high school gymnasiums packed with adoring crowds as he’s done in Iowa, where staff members have led crowds in choreographed dance moves, Mr. Buttigieg appeared in austere settings in North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama that were more typical of an unknown candidate’s first appearances on the presidential campaign trail. The trip was engineered to introduce him to black voters — and perhaps just as importantly, to show him being introduced to black voters.

Source: New York Times December 04, 2019 18:45 UTC