OTTUMWA, Iowa — After a day campaigning in Iowa where potential caucusgoers quizzed him on his inability to connect with minority voters, Pete Buttigieg was forced to respond on Tuesday to twin news stories on how his team has failed to create an inclusive work environment where its nonwhite staff members feel valued and heard.
“We’ve taken steps that may not be something that is typical or has happened a lot before in presidential campaigns to try to empower staffers at all levels to be able to speak to their experiences to raise concerns and to have these tough conversations, and they are tough in every organization and in our country,” he told reporters after a town hall in Ottumwa, Iowa.
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate was referring to initiatives such as training sessions, retreats, follow-up meetings, consultation mechanisms, and surveys that, while a fixture in the corporate world, are not often organized for busy campaigns. He said the reports served as a reminder “of race and the difference all the time on top of doing a job that’s already so hard,” but he couldn’t say how he had acknowledged the issues with aides or whether he would apologize.
“We’ve got to work much harder to do a better job when making sure that inclusion is a reality, especially in the Trump era,” the 38-year-old former mayor added.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Buttigieg campaign staff had complained about experiencing an “emotional weight,” exacerbated by the feeling they had been hired to meet the team’s 40% diversity target. According to documents and recordings, they felt their feedback and ideas weren’t being listened to and it had become demoralizing to work for a candidate who continued to struggle with black or Hispanic Democrats such as themselves.
There were also tensions after Buttigieg’s fundraising staff overruled their vetting counterparts, planning a donor event with supporter Steve Patton, a then-city attorney who tried to stop the release of a video showing Chicago police shooting Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, in 2014. A public backlash led to the campaign removing Patton as the fundraiser’s co-host and returning his contributions.
When pressed on Patton, Buttigieg told reporters on Tuesday that the drama stemmed from “miscommunication.”
“As soon as it came to my attention, we acted immediately,” he said. “When this took place, we took responsibility to review what happened, fix the problems, and make sure that going forward problems like that wouldn’t happen again.”
The New York Times story was published the same day as a Wall Street Journal article about a former aide who had vented about the campaign’s work culture, perpetuated by “ass-kissers, racists, sexists, power-hungry phonies, everything,” in a now-deleted tweet.
Buttigieg’s lack of success with minority outreach was perceived to be a national media narrative backed up by polling, but it’s filtered down to Iowa Democrats, many of whom are still undecided.
Anecdotes, such as a 2011 clip in which Buttigieg asserts that some lower-income and minority students lag behind in school because they don’t have “someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education” have been latched onto by Black Lives Matter activists, who routinely disrupt his rallies, even a fundraising event.
Yet, in early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, which are mostly white, Buttigieg remains in contention to win delegates in what could be a drawn-out nomination fight. In Iowa, he averages 17% support, while in New Hampshire he attracts 14.8% of the vote ahead of the Feb. 3 caucuses and Feb. 11 primary, respectively.
