Pete Buttigieg accidentally referred to “dark money” as “black money” while speaking to a predominantly black audience about campaign finance reform two weeks ago in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
A clip of the blunder started to make waves this week after the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, claimed victory in Iowa.
“I am not a fan of the current campaign finance system. And the reality is, it’s not going to get better, in all the ways we need it to get better, without a constitutional reform,” he said.
Moving to the topic of “dark money,” mainly from super PACs that spend exorbitant amounts of money without revealing their donors, the 38-year-old stumbled verbally.
“So, there’s things we can and should do right away, they can deal with black money — sorry, dark money,” said the presidential candidate before the moderator, radio show host Charlamagne tha God, jokingly said, “African American money.”
Buttigieg, who is white, then quipped that he’s “always happy to take black money contributions into my campaign.”
The video began circulating on social media two weeks after Buttigieg made the campaign stop in South Carolina, with many characterizing the situation as awkward.
Despite his recent victory in Iowa, Buttigieg is in fifth place in South Carolina, hovering at approximately 5.5%, according to a RealClearPolitics average. He falls behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and billionaire businessman Tom Steyer.
In November 2019, Buttigieg was polling at nearly 0% among black primary voters in South Carolina.
Since then, Buttigieg has made repeated efforts to court African American voters, who largely favor Biden and who have given him a “firewall” in South Carolina.
Buttigieg faced backlash for misrepresenting black support for his “Marshall Plan” while using a stock photo of a Kenyan woman to showcase the program. A Brookings Institution analysis from November surmised that if Buttigieg fails to gain greater support from black voters in South Carolina, it would be foreboding of his chances on a national scale.
