Biden, Buttigieg tested with black voters to mixed results as 2020 race shifts

                                                                           

Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg have both spent considerable energy in recent days trying to get back on track after stumbling on issues related to race. But so far just one of the two White House hopefuls seems to be having luck getting the benefit of the doubt from black voters. Despite criticism on race issues from Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Cory Booker, the two African Americans in the Democratic race, Biden maintains the lead in support among black voters and is being helped by his near-decade at the side of the nation's first black president.

Buttigieg on the other hand has been criticized for his response after a police shooting that killed a black man in his community, and already faced little support from black voters. Buttigieg, who would be the nation's first openly gay president, also could be facing a particular challenge with older, more church-going black voters. 

Biden hit a low-point in his campaign after speaking of his work with segregationist senators and getting lambasted at last week’s debate by Sen. Kamala Harris for opposing federally-mandated busing to integrate schools.

The former vice president has pushed back that critics are unfairly discounting the entirety of his career on the issue of racial justice. And while Biden's still the frontrunner in most polls, he has seen his once mammoth lead shrink.

Yet, Biden’s strongest support remains in the African American community where he is 36% of black voters’ choice for the Democratic nomination — better than any of the nearly two dozen candidates vying to take President Trump, according to a CNN poll published Monday.

“His explanation was good enough for me,” said Joe Nelson, 76, a retired Chicago Transit Authority worker, who saw Biden speak last week at the annual convention for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition in Chicago.

                                                                   

Meanwhile, Buttigieg at last week’s debate bluntly acknowledged that he’s fallen short in diversifying his city’s police department. The issue is increasingly relevant as the South Bend, Indiana, mayor deals with the fallout of a recent fatal police shooting in his city — another troubling encounter involving a black man and white police officer that’s made Buttigieg and his small Midwest city the latest example in the ongoing debate on policing in America.

Buttigieg vowed quickly after the shooting to take action to improve the relationship in his city between police and the black community. Still, he is struggling mightily with black voters. He registered 0% support with black voters

Biden, Buttigieg lose ground after debate

Both candidates have seen sobering reactions from likely-Democratic voters writ large following their complicated moments addressing issues involving race over the last few weeks.

In the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, Biden's support remained steady at 24% in a post-debate poll conducted by Suffolk University and USA TODAY. That is the same level of support he had in a Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa Poll taken last month.

But in this week’s CNN national survey, Biden led the crowded Democratic field with 22% support — a 10 percentage point drop in that poll since May. The former vice president also saw his support dip eight percentage points in another post-debate poll published Tuesday by Quinnipiac University. In that poll, Biden now holds a 22% to 20% lead over Harris, a precipitous drop from the 11-point lead he held over his then-closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, just three weeks ago.

In Iowa, a predominantly white electorate, Buttigieg came in fifth at 6% in the Suffolk/USA TODAY survey, compared with 14% in last month's Des Moines Register poll. In this week's CNN poll, he stood at 4% nationally among registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, down 1 percentage point from the cable network's late May poll. Buttigieg saw an even bigger decline in support in the Quinnipiac poll, where his support dropped to 4% compared with 8% in the university's last national polling on June 11.

Following the rocky debate performance, Biden has defended his record and reminded voters of his ties to former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president who picked him to be his vice president.

"I moved to a state where there was still an ongoing, real, genuine struggle on segregation and rights related to the African American community,” Biden recalled at Silicon Valley fundraiser on Saturday  about his move to Delaware from Pennsylvania as a child. “That's how I got involved as a kid in politics, and that's how I got involved as a public defender.”

At his Rainbow Push Coalition speech the day after the debate, Biden attempted to bat down Harris’s criticism on busing. He also tried to downplay their debate tussle by arguing “that 30 to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can't do justice to a lifetime committed to civil rights.” Biden was warmly received by the predominantly African American audience.

“You have to weigh the entirety of what the person has done over the course of his career," said Nelson, the retired transit worker. "I could be comfortable voting for him as president.” Still, Nelson described himself as torn on whether to give Biden or Harris his vote in Illinois’ March 17 primary.

Buttigieg tries but struggles to connect with black voters

Even before the police shooting that unsettled his city and forced him off the campaign trail for several days, Buttigieg was struggling to win over black voters.

In response to early criticisms, he rolled out what he dubbed the “Douglass Plan”— a proposal to increase economic prosperity in the African American community that was named after the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The plan includes reforming credit scoring and increasing access to credit. He pledged as president to increase the federal government's contracting with minority-owned firms to 25% and to pass a new Voting Rights Act that would ban voter ID laws and require potentially discriminatory voting law changes to be reviewed by the Justice Department.

Days after Buttigieg unveiled the Douglass Plan, 54-year-old Eric Logan was shot and killed by South Bend Police Sgt. Ryan O’Neill.

South Bend Police say the officer was dispatched after reports of a man breaking into automobiles in the early morning hours of June 16. When O'Neill arrived, police say, he discovered Logan reaching into a car. When the officer approached, O'Neill says, Logan produced a knife and advanced on him in a threatening way. After several warnings, police say, O'Neill fired twice. He was wearing a body camera, but did not turn it on during the encounter.

Buttigieg said before Tuesday’s speech at the Rainbow Push convention that his low standing in the polls with African Americans has more to do with the community’s lack of familiarity with him than the shooting.

“First of all, there are lot of voters I need to get to know and need to get to know me,“ said Buttigieg. “They need to understand the details of the Douglass Plan that we’re continuing to roll out and frankly they need to see me in action for a longer period of time.

"When you’re new on the scene and not from a community of color, you got to work much harder in order to earn that trust. Trust is a function largely of quantity of time.”

Rainbow Push convention attendee Jacqueline Carrera said Buttigieg was impressive, but she said many black voters “are risk averse,” and that plays into their willingness to given Biden another shot and pass on Buttigieg.

“Black voters can’t risk to throw their votes on a candidate they think can (only) perhaps win,” said Carrera, who remains undecided on who she is voting for. “So they say, ‘Joe has been there with us on this, and Joe has been with us on that.’ And of course his Obama connection carries so much weight. But they feel like they can’t throw their support on a candidate like (Buttigieg) because they feel they don’t know what’s going to happen to him. That’s the challenge for him.

"To me, this is an introduction for maybe another run for president or another office down the road.”

Jackson credits Buttigieg for handling awful situation with transparency

Rev. Jackson, who heads the Rainbow Push civil rights organization, said Buttigieg deserves credit for trying to find solutions for an issue wrapped up in systemic racism that has festered in South Bend and other communities

"He's handled an awful situation well by being transparent," Jackson said.

Other issues may also be at play for Buttigieg as he tries to win support from black voters.

Sam Johnson, a Democratic operative in South Carolina, said Buttigieg is struggling with older, church-going black voters from rural parts of his state in part because he is gay. South Carolina is the fourth state to vote in the 2020 primaries and has a Democratic electorate that is projected to be more than 60% African American. Winning black voters' support is crucial to winning the state.

Johnson, a former chief of staff to Columbia, S.C., Mayor Steve Benjamin, said Buttigieg needs to do more to drive his message to younger black voters as well as those in South Carolina’s larger cities, who would be friendly to his message, if he’s going to turn his campaign around.

“Him saying he’s sorry is not going to get it done, but I think his message can resonate if he shows and tells how he’s going to make big change,” Johnson said.

in the CNN poll following last week’s debate.

“I am asked how I’m going to earn the black vote in the polls ten times more often than how my policies would benefit black Americans,” Buttigieg lamented in a speech Tuesday before the same Rainbow Push convention. “It’s as if I’m being asked more about how to win than how to deserve to win."