Buttigieg Acknowledges Missteps to Black Voters: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Tom Steyer became the seventh candidate to qualify for the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night in South Carolina, his campaign said in a statement.

Steyer, who didn’t qualify for the Nevada debate last week, made the cut by garnering 18% in a CBS News/YouGov South Carolina poll released on Sunday. To qualify, candidates need to have won a delegate to the national convention from Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada, or have reached at least 10% in at least four national polls or 12% in two polls in South Carolina.

Steyer will be joined on stage by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bloomberg.

(Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

Steyer has spent heavily to court African American voters who make up 60% of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate. Biden holds a small lead in the state, followed by Sanders, with Steyer in third place, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

The Charleston debate will be hosted by CBS News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, in partnership with Twitter.

Buttigieg Acknowledges Missteps to Black Voters (2:28 p.m.)

Pete Buttigieg acknowledged missteps in handling issues of race in a speech at a black church on Sunday, vowing to do “a lot of listening” and surround himself with people who would let him know when he made mistakes.

The Democratic presidential candidate and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has struggled to make inroads with African Americans. He’s polling in the low single digits with black voters, well behind rivals such as Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. As the primary moves to South Carolina on Saturday, he’s trying to improve his standing with black voters who make up more than 60% of the state’s Democratic electorate.

“I have been humbled,” Buttigieg said at the First Baptist Church of James Island in Charleston, South Carolina. “Humbled by the persistence of the forms of institutional racism that did not bypass our city, humbled by the ways in which we have struggled to make inequities better, especially when it came to things like disparities in arrests in the police department that I oversaw, and issue after issue where I saw that having the right heart was not enough.”

Buttigieg has been criticized for his oversight of criminal justice issues in South Bend -- particularly the number of arrests of black residents for marijuana possession, and his handling of a police-involved shooting last summer in which a white police officer killed a black man.

“My point standing before you is not to claim that I understand more than I do but rather to promise, as the scripture says, not to lean on my own understanding too much but to do a lot of listening along to way,” Buttigieg said. “Not to say that I get it, but to promise to always surround myself with people who will let know when I don’t.” -- Tyler Pager

Biden Says Facebook Pulled Down Fake Accounts (1:14 p.m.)

Joe Biden said Facebook has pulled down fake accounts, run by Russians, that were saying negative things about him online.

In an interview with CBS News, Biden said “the Russians” are working against his bid to be the Democrats’ choice to be president.

“They spent a lot of money on bots on Facebook -- and they’ve been taken down -- saying Biden is a bad guy. They don’t want Biden running,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “Fake accounts, yes. And they’re taken down.”

Biden said he hadn’t spoken to Facebook about the matter, but that his staff had told him the accounts were removed. He also seemed to dismiss rival Bernie Sanders’ comments that recent online vitriol attributed to his supporters might instead have been part of Russian interference in the 2020 election.

“The people who did these terrible things to the Culinary Workers and the women who run that operation, I guess anything’s possible, but they’re identified as Bernie supporters,” Biden said. -- Magan Crane

South Carolina’s Clyburn to Endorse Wednesday (10:06 a.m.)

South Carolina’s Representative James Clyburn, known as a kingmaker in the state, told ABC News he will endorse a Democratic presidential candidate on Wednesday morning, after the next debate. An endorsement from Clyburn could help save a candidate’s flagging campaign.

Clyburn gave no indication who he would support, but warned that nominating Bernie Sanders could make it difficult for the Democrats to hold on to competitive House seats that gave them the majority in 2018.

“It’s going to be tough to hold on to these jobs if you have to make the case for a self-proclaimed democratic socialist,” Clyburn said. He said South Carolinians are “leery” of the label “socialist.”

South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary is widely seen as a must-win for former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s yet to come in first in any primary contest, weakening his claim that he is the one who can beat President Donald Trump.

In a separate NBC interview, Clyburn said Tuesday night’s debate would have a big impact, and that Elizabeth Warren did herself “a lot of good” with her scrappy performance in last week’s debate. “She demonstrated to the viewing public that she has tenacity,” he said. -- Steven T. Dennis

COMING UP

South Carolina has a primary on Feb. 29. The leading candidates will debate there on Tuesday, Feb. 25. Fourteen states and one U.S. territory will vote on Super Tuesday, March 3.

(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

--With assistance from Erik Wasson, Magan Crane, Steven T. Dennis and Tyler Pager.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Max Berley

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