Buttigieg acknowledges work needed to appeal to black voters

Associated Press

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.

Continuing his outreach to black voters, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg acknowledged Sunday he needs to do more work to connect with the community, particularly in the early-voting state of South Carolina.

“It shows we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Buttigieg said after a town hall with 600 mostly white voters in North Charleston, where nearly half the population is black.

Buttigieg is planning to do just that during his two-day swing in South Carolina, the first state where black votes play a major role in the presidential primaries. Today, he’s having a meet and greet in Orangeburg before sitting down with community leaders in Columbia.

Some of Buttigieg’s comments touched on issues black voters have said they see as crucial in the 2020 presidential election, including criminal justice reform. On that front, Buttigieg said he wanted to do away with structures “that perpetuate racial inequality in this country,” including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Elsewhere in campaigning Sunday by Democratic presidential candidates:

MICHAEL BENNET

The latest Democrat pursuing the presidential nomination is trying to distinguish himself as someone “who’s going to level with the American people about why our system doesn’t seem to work for them.”

Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his time in Washington has helped him know how to get things done and what needs fixing.

He said it’s “a disgrace that we lost” to Donald Trump in 2016, adding that Democrats must find an approach to deny him a second term.

BETO O’ROURKE

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke repeated his calls to impeach President Donald Trump and drew a distinction between himself and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has declined any rush to proceedings.

The former Texas congressman spoke with reporters on Sunday after a town hall at a former livestock auction space in rural Shenandoah, Iowa.

KAMALA HARRIS

Capping a week in which her testy exchange with Attorney General William Barr went viral, Sen. Kamala Harris on Sunday told a crowd of thousands gathered at a dinner hosted by the country’s oldest NAACP chapter that Barr “lied to Congress” and “is clearly more interested in representing the president than the American people.”

The Democratic presidential candidate was the keynote speaker Sunday at the Detroit NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner, attended by a mostly black audience of nearly 10,000.

BERNIE SANDERS

Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a sweeping agriculture and rural investment plan that would change farm subsidies and break up major agriculture monopolies.

Sanders unveiled the plan in Osage, Iowa, a town of fewer than 4,000 residents.