Mayor Pete Says He “Partnered” with Black Restaurant Owners, But They Disagree
Pete Buttigieg is working hard to convince black voters that they should support him. To do this, he's promoting his "Frederick Douglass Plan," which he describes as "a comprehensive investment in the empowerment of Black America." That's from an op-ed that Buttigieg wrote last week for The State, a local newspaper based in Columbia, South Carolina, in which he writes: "That begins with entrepreneurship, and our campaign has proudly partnered with local businesses like Diane’s Kitchen in Chester, Atlantis Restaurant in Moncks Corner and the Fair Deal Grocery on Charleston’s Eastside."
Buttigieg needs all the help he can get. A January Fox News poll found that Buttigieg's support among black voters in South Carolina was 2 percent, and a February Emerson polling showed Buttigieg only had the support of 6 percent of non-white voters nationally.
Buttigieg's record as mayor of South Bend hasn't helped his sales pitch to black voters. He fired the city's first black police chief, Darryl Boykins, after Boykins illegally recorded officers' conversations, which would be unobjectionable except the recordings revealed patterns of racism among white officers. Buttigieg also admitted recently that he was "slow to realize" that South Bend was still racially segregated, and at the latest debate, when moderators asked him about the increase in black arrests for marijuana while he was mayor, he tried to dodge the question by quoting a different statistic—overall drug arrests—and saying it was below the national average.
Winning the backing of local black-owned businesses, and forming partnerships with them, could be an effective way to signal that Buttigieg is gaining ground in black support. There's one major problem with the strategy though: apparently those businesses are unaware that they've partnered with Buttigieg.
That's according to ABC News, which reached out to the owners:
"I stand for what I stand for and I didn't say I had a partnership," Diane Cole, the owner of Diane's Kitchen, told ABC News on Friday, Feb. 14. After being asked by ABC News about Cole's reaction, the campaign sent a series of messages to Cole trying to persuade her to change her position so it would more closely match the language Buttigieg used in his op-ed.
Cole told ABC News that the campaign misspelled her name in at least one of the emails. She ultimately told the campaign, "It sounds like you're saying that I am your business partner. I'm only going to accept that you all stopped in while you were campaigning in South Carolina and I welcomed you all."
The story was the same with Atlantis Restaurant. The Buttigieg campaign held an event at the restaurant in January, but owner Wendell Varner didn't learn that the campaign claimed they were in a partnership until ABC News contacted him. Varner said, "It's a little disheartening to say that—that they would say that we have a partnership with them when we don't." The Buttigieg campaign responded to that statement by insisting that Atlantis Restaurant said it was "proud to partner with Mayor Pete in January." Varner then replied to ABC News again to stress that he was in no way partnered with Buttigieg, saying his relationship with the campaign went no further than "they paid us to have an event at our restaurant."
This isn't the first time the Buttigieg campaign has made overblown claims about black support. In November, the campaign touted a list of some 400 officials in South Carolina had backed Buttigieg's Frederick Douglass Plan. But an investigation by The Intercept found that the three people named in the promotional material for the endorsements—Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Devine, state representative Ivory Thigpen, and chair of the state party’s Black Caucus Johnnie Cordero—never actually endorsed Buttigieg's plan. Thigpen, in fact, told The Intercept, "It was clear to me, or at least I thought I made it clear to them, that I was a strong Bernie Sanders supporter—actually co-chair of the state, and I was not seeking to endorse their candidate or the plan."
And last week, the Buttigieg campaign told CNN that actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key was set to announce his support for the former mayor at early voting events in Nevada. That, it turns out, wasn't accurate either. The campaign released a statement walking back Key's anticipated support, saying, "Pete's campaign is excited for the voter registration support Mr. Key brings, although Keegan-Michael has not officially endorsed any candidate."
Despite the overall lack of black support, the Buttigieg campaign remains committed to investing in black America. It even says so on shirts available on the campaign website for $27 each.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
