Pete builds bridges

Last weekend, PETE BUTTIGIEG embarked on a jam-packed trip to the Palmetto State, where his last presidential campaign ended, and the next one will begin. 

It was Pete’s first trip to South Carolina in 3 years – a point made ham-handedly by a GAVIN NEWSOM spokesman on X, the everything app (in his personal capacity, he told Fox News). 

That tweet provoked a spirited backlash in certain venues – namely, group chats within the Acela corridor – which boiled down to the same thing you probably muttered when you begrudgingly signed up for this newsletter:

“Dude, it’s WAY too early for this shit! We are barreling toward the most important midterm of our lifetimes, what is wrong with you!?”

But there were deeper problems with the ostensible dig at Buttigieg, which was made in the form of a reply to a tweet about him keynoting a fundraiser for the NAACP branch in Orangeburg, a legendary power center of the civil rights movement.

Indeed, Pete’s last South Carolina visit was 3 years ago – when he and Jim Clyburn announced a $23M investment to revive Orangeburg’s historic Black commercial district and reconnect downtown with two HBCUs, SC State and Claflin University.

“He is responsible for the Railroad Corner. Do I need to say any more? We need to stand and welcome the former secretary,” Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler said at the NAACP gala. 

That praise was echoed by many other Black voices in coverage of the trip, which included a Claflin roundtable, a church visit in Columbia; a fundraiser in Charleston, a policy conference in Florence, and an appearance on former SCDP & DNC Chair Jaime Harrison’s podcast.

Perhaps the narrative that Pete Buttigieg can’t appeal to Black voters was always a bit overtorqued. 

It’s undeniable that he performed poorly with Black voters in 2020, and relatedly, got smoked in South Carolina. But the story is more nuanced than that.

Buttigieg was a 37-year-old mayor, with little name ID or record beyond South Bend, running against Barack Obama’s VP.  He went all-in on IA & NH, hoping to emerge with escape velocity – which nearly worked. But his razor-thin IA win was muddled by days of caucus chaos; deprived of that momentum, he came 1.3% short in NH, then finished 3rd in NV.

As of Oct. 2019, Pete had 34 field offices across IA & NH; in SC he had only 3, and hadn’t yet hired his political or comms director. An SC poll taken just 3 months out from the primary showed 60% of Black voters hadn’t heard enough about him to form an opinion. Even after he’d won Iowa, 42% of Black Dems nationally said the same. (He never topped 12% in national polling averages.)

Moreover, by the time SC voted – with its older, more moderate electorate – Bernie Sanders had steamrolled Nevada, and Joe Biden was increasingly being cast as the only one who could stop him. Then came Jim Clyburn’s late endorsement, which a stunning 61% of Dem voters said was important to their decision.

Biden ultimately won over 6-in-10 Black voters in SC. Bernie got just 17%, Steyer bought 13%, and Warren, Buttigieg, & Klobuchar all finished in the low-single digits.

In fact, every SC Democratic primary since 2008 – and all but one since 1992 (!) – has featured Barack Obama, a Clinton, or an Obama/Clinton VP. Each of those contests has been a blowout (28+ points), with the victor winning over 60% of the Black vote. 

None of this is meant to whitewash (pun intended) Pete’s failure to build a multiracial coalition in 2020, nor downplay the challenge ahead; if he can’t improve his standing with Black voters, he will not be a viable candidate, full stop.

But the obscure mayor stumbled belatedly into unfamiliar terrain and suffered the same fate as a slew of prominent Senators, and the dynamics will be wildly different this time. The newly minted first-in-the-nation primary will be a wide open contest. And Mayor Pete is all growed up and Secretaryfied.

In some ways, you’d actually be better off as a 30-something Midwest Mayor than a mid-40s ex-Cabinet Secretary in 2028. Surely, Pete would rather dazzle unsuspecting reporters and savior-hungry Dems than field questions about Joe Biden’s mental acuity as one of his top DC bureaucrats. But…

There are benefits to having spent 4 years cultivating relationships with local leaders nationwide and doling out massive investments in their communities.

The aforementioned Orangeburg project was hardly unique. Buttigieg also touted the $175M DOT directed to the Lake Marion Bridge in Santee, and funding for multiple SC airport expansions. In 2022, he toured infrastructure projects in the Lowcountry with Clyburn. And it’s not just South Carolina. 

For example, in Michigan, Pete can point to the $105M grant he announced in Detroit to replace a freeway that bulldozed historic Black neighborhoods. In Nevada, there’s the $378M Maryland Parkway project he broke ground on in Vegas, among other rapid-transit ventures. In New Mexico, he can highlight the $60M DOT sent to overhaul the US 64 corridor through the Navajo Nation. You get the idea.

The Transportation Secretary-to-President pipeline may not have been obvious, but when you’re handed a trillion dollars and a mandate to revitalize disadvantaged communities, you can make a lot of friends.

Pete still has much work to do to improve his standing with Black voters – as does every 2028er not named KAMALA HARRIS – but he’s been attacking that work with the intentionality and humility it demands. And he’s got a lot more to sell than he used to.

As former South Carolina State Senator and Biden-backer Marlon Kimpson said, “the Pete Buttigieg of 2020 is not the Pete Buttigieg of 2026.”