Pete Buttigieg, the only veteran in the top tier of candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is turning to South Carolina's large military community to help shore up his nagging lack of support among black voters. The primary on Saturday in the diverse southern state is seen as
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Pete Buttigieg, the only veteran in the top tier of candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is turning to South Carolina's large military community to help shore up his nagging lack of support among black voters.
Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted from Jan. 29 to Feb. 19 showed only 1% of black Democrats and independents said they would vote for Buttigieg, compared with 33% for Joe Biden, 19% for Sanders, 10% for Mike Bloomberg and 7% for Elizabeth Warren. "Pete often talks about how in the military you get to work with people of very different backgrounds – whether it's political affiliations or religions, or ethnicity or race. One of the things that binds people together in the military is service over all of those other things," a campaign official said.
Buttigieg supporters say that carries extra weight in South Carolina, which has more than 400,000 veterans and is peppered with military installations. One is Fort Jackson in Columbia, where Buttigieg did some training while in the Navy Reserve before deploying to Afghanistan for seven months as a counterterrorism specialist.
"People of color are disproportionately more likely to send their children into the military as their best option for a better life," Hollier said. Despite Biden's poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, support for him among black voters, who appear to be more locked in on their pick for a nominee than other Democrats, has increased slightly to 33%, according to the past four weeks of nationwide Reuters/Ipsos polling.Vivian Grant, 52, a black Army veteran who works as an education counselor at Fort Jackson, said she was undecided between Biden and Buttigieg.
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