But Buttigieg also undertook a delicate task before the African Methodist Episcopal worshippers. As a gay, married man addressing a denomination that does not allow same-sex marriage rites, he tried to seek common ground over being members of minority groups whose civil rights have come under attack. It was a nod to his sexuality, following the disclosure last week that the Buttigieg campaign held focus groups that found some black voters in South Carolina were uncomfortable with a gay man as president.
“All of us in different ways have been led to question whether we belong,” Buttigieg told the pews of black worshippers. “And I know what it is to look on the news and see your rights up for debate. All of us must extend a hand to one another. Because I also know what it is to find acceptance where you least expect it.”
As Buttigieg increasingly presents himself to Democrats as a younger, moderate alternative to former Vice President Joe Biden, he is struggling badly to compete against one of Biden’s strengths: deep connections to black voters. Nowhere is that problem greater than in South Carolina, which votes fourth in the Democratic nomination fight in February and is the first state where black voters are decisive — a critical test that could be a prologue for primaries in March, when African Americans will also be influential.
A Monmouth University poll of Democratic likely primary voters in South Carolina released last week found Buttigieg at 3% overall, with just 1% support from African Americans.
There are many reasons for Buttigieg’s low standing among black voters, the foremost being that he is little-known to many of them. He is the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who still has a relatively low national profile — including on civil rights and issues of race — and focused much of this year building support among liberals, Democratic donors and voters in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
But after attracting overwhelmingly white audiences to his campaign events in South Carolina, despite blacks making up a majority of Democrats in the state, the Buttigieg campaign held focus groups here, which suggested “being gay was a barrier” for him, according to an internal campaign memo that surfaced last week. (His campaign said they did not leak the memo.)
Many of the 24 uncommitted black voters in the groups, men and women ages 25 to 65, were deeply uncomfortable discussing Buttigieg’s sexual orientation, the memo said, adding that “they felt the mayor was ‘flaunting’ his sexuality by the very mention of having a husband.”
In interviews this weekend, black Democratic Party officials in South Carolina largely said that Buttigieg’s sexuality was not a concern to them, while voters expressed more divergent views. Yet most party leaders and voters agreed that being a married gay man would cause some discomfort with religious or conservative black Democrats.
Buttigieg’s sexuality may be a factor with religious and white conservative voters as well, but black Democrats are a focal point because they were critical to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others winning the party nomination in recent years.
“The biggest issue for him is he’s married to a man,” said Phyllis Harris-Drakeford, Democratic chairwoman of Kershaw County, South Carolina. “I have no problem with that: You love who you want to love, and you have the freedom in this country to do that. But in the South in particular, that’s not well favored.”
As part of Buttigieg’s effort to connect with African Americans this weekend, the mayor hosted a homecoming tailgate cookout Saturday at Allen University, a historically black campus in Columbia, South Carolina.
Gabriel Greene, a long-distance truck driver whose son was a football prospect, said he had not heard of Buttigieg. As a reporter ticked off some details about him — 37 years old, a mayor, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, married to a man — Greene interrupted.
“You say he’s married to a man?” he said. “He lost my vote. I believe in Adam and Even, not Adam and Steve.’’
In the crowd of alumni, students and parents at the university, which was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, there were others who felt the same as Greene did, but also many who did not.
“I was not called to judge people; I was just called to love people,” said Leon Maxwell, an Allen alumnus, who is pastor of St. Peters AME Church in Walterboro, South Carolina.
Maxwell said that as an AME pastor, he was not allowed to perform same-sex marriages but that when it came to picking a presidential nominee, he was interested in polices, not “what this person does in their bedroom.”
“All I want to know is that we have someone who is going to try to bring people together rather than tear people apart,” he said.
At a barbecue pit staffed by older Allen alumni, Boston McClean, a retired real estate appraiser, said he could not support a gay presidential candidate because “I’m a Christian.”
But a fellow griller, Charlie Hudson, said he didn’t think Buttigieg “should be judged any different than anybody else.”
“The younger generation is kind of bringing us along to the fact there was misplaced judgment of other people," said Hudson, who is retired from the Department of Justice.
David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic strategist who was a top adviser to President Barack Obama, said in an interview that Buttigieg’s sexual identity is “a real issue for him,” but one born of success. Having risen to third in Iowa polling, a strong finish there could vault him into a position to challenge Biden for the moderate Democratic vote. But once the race turns from Iowa and New Hampshire, which are more than 90% white, to South Carolina on Feb. 29, Buttigieg will confront a wall, Axelrod said. “You can’t be the nominee of the Democratic Party and not engender support among African Americans.
“There has been historical resistance within elements of the African American community to homosexuality," Axelrod said. “We saw that in the debate over gay marriage, where the community was the least accepting of same-sex marriage among Democratic constituencies.”
Whereas Buttigieg’s support thus far has come from college-educated white liberals, 74% of blacks in South Carolina call themselves conservative or moderate politically, and 81% said religion is very important, with 64% reading Scripture weekly, according to the Pew Research Center.
Buttigieg, in an interview Saturday, said he was not concerned that being gay would substantially hurt him in the long term with voters black or white.
“In South Bend, people got over it," he said, referring to his landslide reelection as mayor after he publicly acknowledged he was gay. “I think people will get over it elsewhere, too. No gain is permanent in society, but moving away from prejudice has been a pretty strong one-way street.”
Buttigieg also said his campaign did not leak the memo, rebutting speculation that his operatives might have done so as an explanation for his failure to gain much support from black voters.
At a rally in Rock Hill on Saturday, Buttigieg drew more than 1,500, a crowd that sprung to its feet and whooped when an attendee asked if America was ready for such a young president.
But in the sea of supporters, there were very few black faces.
“I think we’ve got our work cut out for us, and we know what we have to do,” Buttigieg said afterward. “I think the majority of black voters here have no opinion of me at all, which means we’ve got to make sure that we get not just our message but my face out there, and that’ll continue to drive our strategy.”
The Buttigieg campaign was understaffed in South Carolina when it held its black focus groups over the summer. Today it has four field offices, 34 staff members and a black state director. The Monmouth poll last week showed 51% of likely South Carolina primary voters had no opinion of Buttigieg or hadn’t heard of him, suggesting room to grow his support.
Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative, pushed back on the notion that African Americans are less accepting of gay equality than other people.
“I don’t believe black voters are more homophobic than any other group, and I hate that narrative,” said Sellers, who is black.
He said Buttigieg’s struggles to win black support were explained by his lack of prominent African American endorsements and the fact he has engaged black voters superficially, like many white candidates do. “Nobody at the barbershop” knows who Buttigieg is, he said. “You’ve got to get out in these communities, have some connection with this struggle and why we just won’t throw our votes away.”
Polling suggests there are differences between how blacks and whites view homosexuality.
While support for same-sex marriage has grown broadly among all Americans over the past 15 years, black support, at 51%, lags the 62% of whites who support same-sex marriage, according to Pew.
The divisions are deeper when church affiliation and race are factored in. Nationally, fewer than 5 in 10 black Protestants support same-sex marriage, compared with roughly two-thirds of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics, according to a 2018 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.
White evangelicals, largely a Republican voting bloc, are the least supportive of same-sex marriage: Only 34% back it.
Tameika Isaac Devine, a black City Council member in Columbia, said younger African Americans were more likely to embrace a gay candidate. Yet more than half of the state’s black voters are over 45, presenting another challenge for Buttigieg.
“When you look at who’s going to vote,” she said, “the majority of African Americans are going to be older people.”
This article originally appeared in
.