Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg made an effort to set himself apart from the three leading front-runners in the 2020 race at a fundraiser Tuesday night in Downtown Boston.
“If you want the furthest-left-most candidate you can get, you’ve got a clear choice, and if you want the candidate with the most years in Washington under their belt, you’ve got a clear choice,” Buttigieg told reporters after a "grassroots" fundraising event at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. “Everybody else, I might just be your candidate — and we think that’s most Democratic voters right now.”
Candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden continue to be at the top of the polls in New Hampshire, according to a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday . Sanders is leading at 21 percent, followed by Warren at 18 percent, Biden at 15 percent, and Buttigieg in fourth place at 10 percent.
The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana also addressed his attempts to gain traction among Black voters, a demographic where he has struggled. Buttigieg polled at 3 percent overall and one percent among Black voters in South Carolina, according to a Monmouth University poll from earlier this week . South Carolina is a decisive state for Black voters and the fourth state to vote in the Democratic primary.
Buttigieg’s issues with courting the Black vote were illustrated by a leaked internal memo last week, revealing feedback from a focus group claiming that some black voters see Buttigieg’s sexuality as “a barrier… particularly for men who seemed deeply uncomfortable even discussing it.”
Buttigieg, who is openly gay and mentioned his husband several times during the fundraiser in Boston, took a question about courting the black vote in 2020, but declined to address the memo or his sexuality in his response.
“We've put forward the most comprehensive plan of any 2020 candidate when it comes to dismantling systemic racism in this country,” Buttigieg told the more than 1,000-person crowd, promising to end incarceration for drug possession “in general, because I believe it does more harm than good,” and to end racial disparities in criminal sentencing.
“It is not enough to take a racist policy, remove it and replace it with a neutral policy and expect equality to rise on its own,” he said. "It doesn't happen because the inequality was intentional, and the removal of that inequality has to be intentional, too, and it takes resources.”
Buttigieg didn’t shy away from discussing his marriage or sexuality at other moments in the conversation, mentioning his husband, Chasten, and the Halloween costumes of their two dogs, Buddy and Truman (an avocado costume and a sunflower costume, respectively).
Buttigieg, who graduated from Harvard in 2004, commended Massachusetts for being the first state to legalize marriage equality.
“If you could have told me when I was just always up the river trying to figure out who I was,” he said, “that 15 years later I could be standing here married and a serious candidate for the American presidency, I would not have believed you.”
Buttigieg will continue to campaign this week in New Hampshire before kicking off a three-day bus tour in Northern Iowa.
