CHARLESTON, S.C. — 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg said the top Democrat in Virginia should resign, even though he attended a fundraiser for him hosted by one of his lawyers.
A day after the fundraiser at the home of Jessica Killeen, deputy counsel to Democratic governor Ralph Northam, in Alexandria, Virginia, Buttigieg said Northam should resign over the photos in his medical school yearbook featuring people in “blackface and Ku Klux Klan garb.
“My views on that haven’t changed since the last time I spoke out about that,” Buttigieg told reporters at a Charleston forum for black voters.
In February, Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., joined a chorus of Democrats demanding Northam’s resignation. He also urged Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax to step down after he was accused of sexual assault by two different women. Fairfax denied the allegations, and both men have remained in office.
When pressed on whether that meant he still thought Northam and Fairfax should step aside, Buttigieg said: “Yeah, I have nothing to add further from last time we talked about that.”
Buttigieg used the forum to appeal to black voters, with whom he is struggling to win support. He touched on policing and prison sentencing, as well as the relationship between the various levels of governments in their response.
“Gentrification is not good if by gentrification we mean that people are being driven out of their neighborhoods,” he said of urban communities. “We love seeing economic growth, but it’s got to be economic growth that doesn’t leave behind the people who’ve been in these neighborhoods all along.”
The 37-year-old, openly gay, former Navy Reserve officer is set to return to Virginia on Saturday night for the Democratic Party of Virginia’s Blue Commonwealth Dinner, to be held in Richmond.
