On Monday, Pete Buttigieg, who has had a great deal of trouble galvanizing black voters to support him, ran into another roadblock as he joined striking workers protesting against McDonalds in Charleston, South Carolina for a $15 minimum wage. Buttigieg was accosted by roughly a dozen activists from Black Lives Matter chanting, “Pete can’t be our president, where was $15 in South Bend?”
Buttigieg had to shout through the chanting, according to The Daily Mail, calling, “You deserve a union and we stand with you. No matter who you support, I support you; we support you; we stand together and we will not rest until one job is enough in the United States of America.”
The Daily Mail added, “Brittany Smalls, the Pennsylvania coordinator for Black Voters Matter, said she didn’t believe Buttigieg truly supported a $15 an hour minimum wage because he didn’t enact one in South Bend.”
The Fight for $15 rally is now being heckled with Buttigieg at front of it by Black Voters Matter protesters chanting “Where was $15 in South Bend. Pete can’t be our president.” The worker organizers are pissed.
“This is a workers strike. How dare you,” one yelled that them. pic.twitter.com/U8AYASqxht— Steve Contorno (@scontorno) February 24, 2020
Buttigieg had to race into a car after the rally as he was chased down by Black Voters Matter protesters. He got into a black SUV without talking to the media and drove away.
— Steve Contorno (@scontorno) February 24, 2020
As The Daily Wire reported earlier this month, “Buttigieg was grilled by ABC News during and after the network’s primary debate on Friday for appearing to lie about his record as mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Specifically, Buttigieg was grilled for falsely claiming that the overall rate of black arrests and marijuana arrests were lower while he was mayor, when in fact, under his leadership, a black person was four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than a white person. Buttigieg initially dodged the question and talked around it before ABC News pressed him hard on the issue:
ABC NEWS: Right, want to go back to the original question though. How do you explain the increase in black arrests in South Bend under your leadership for marijuana possession?
BUTTIGIEG: And again, the overall rate was lower–
ABC NEWS: No, there was an increase. The year before you were in office it was lower. Once you [came] in office in 2012, that number went up. In 2018, the last number year that we have a record for, that number was still up.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie blasted Buttigieg, saying:
I think the moment that could be a foreshadowing for the future is when Mayor Pete was up there outright lying about his record on African American arrests on marijuana, and Lindsay Davis of ABC challenged him more than any candidate on that stage challenged him tonight. And you saw the look on his face. He looked like a deer in the headlights, and let me tell you, he thinks Lindsay Davis is hard?
If he ever gets on the same stage with Donald Trump, it’s gonna be a whole different story, who will call him on those things. And I think these other candidates better get serious about calling Mayor Pete on the record in South Bend, and so I think it was a missed opportunity for the other candidates. Elizabeth Warren [gave] him a little bit of a shot on that, but not nearly enough time spent on it.
Last November, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) criticized Buttigieg for comparing the discrimination that he felt as a gay man to the historic civil rights abuses of black Americans, saying, “Those of us who’ve been involved in civil rights for a long time, we know that it is important that we not compare our struggles. It is not productive, it is not smart and strategically, [and] it works against what we need to do which is build coalition.”