The NPR Politics Podcast - Candidates Vie For Support Of Black Voters; Bloomberg Remarks Cause Controversy

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Joe Biden's theory of the case is that his current support among black voters will lead to success in Nevada and South Carolina. That, in turn, he hopes will propel him to victory in the Super Tuesday contests in early March.Michael Bloomberg, along with other candidates, hope to earn the support of black voters and erode Biden's base. For Bloomberg, his past remarks about black men and crime, "stop-and-frisk" policing, and housing discrimination could make that difficult.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, demographics and culture correspondent Juana Summers, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi! This is the Ice Corps Drilling Team in the Allen Hills, Antarctica. We are finishing up our field season camping on blue ice, battling freezing temperatures and 40-knot winds in hopes of finding the oldest ice on Earth, which we will use to study past climate. This podcast is recorded at 1138 a.m. on Thursday, February 13th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, and hopefully we'll all have taken a much-needed shower. Okay, here's the show. One, that's amazing. And two, you think campaign life is hard?

Imagine camping on an ice block in Antarctica. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Don Gagne. I cover national politics. Now, I am here in warm and cozy Washington, D.C., but where are you guys? You're out on the road. I am in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, where I am checking in with campaigns ahead of the state's February 29th primary. And I am on the Mike Bloomberg campaign bus. We are rolling somewhere between Greensboro headed toward Raleigh, North Carolina, where he's campaigning today. Don, I picture the billionaire's campaign bus to be all champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Is it butler service, diamond-crusted seats? What's it like? Not so much. I had a good turkey sandwich though. All right, I want to start with you because you're in South Carolina, obviously one of the important upcoming contests. And former Vice President Joe Biden has put so much stock in the outcome of the South Carolina primary. What can you tell us? What are you hearing on the ground? Yeah, that's absolutely right. So Joe Biden's ability to mobilize Black support here for this primary, as well as across the South and those Super Tuesday states that come, have really been a foundation of his candidacy. We saw him come here to Columbia as those New Hampshire results rolled in, saying that African-Americans haven't had their say in this primary yet. Latino and Hispanic voters have not had their say in this primary yet. So his campaign is banking on a strong showing here. One thing I've noticed is I've been talking to his campaign and a lot of

the other campaigns here in the state is that what was once a presumed outcome that he would win the state. Other campaigns say that they don't think that's the case anymore. He's got a lot of competition here for the black vote. From who? Well, first person who I think of immediately is Tom Steyer, the billionaire, hedge fund investor, and environmental activist. He's been putting in a ton of work here on the ground. His campaign tells me he has more than 90 staffers here, which means I think he has the largest footprint here on the ground. And they have been spending a lot of money on television and radio ads, a direct mail campaign, and really sending organizers out to places where people here say that presidential candidates don't often go in order to court the state's black vote. Where do presidential candidates not often go in South

Carolina? Rural communities? Is it coastal? Where is it? I hear a lot about that in rural communities. I've spent a lot of my time in Columbia and the surrounding areas simply because that's where a lot of these campaigns have their headquarters. And I was talking to one local woman who was telling me that her community is impoverished, that it's not necessarily the safest, that there are a lot of folks who are disadvantaged there. And the Steyer campaign actually came in. The candidate himself wasn't there, but his campaign actually held a fish fry there and just was trying to work to connect, talk about Tom's message, of course, but to connect folks with local resources that they may or may not need. So that's one example. The other people that we've been really watching closely here are Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, who also have

really large staffs here. They've been spending a lot of time on the ground. Pete Buttigieg's campaign just announced they now have 55 staffers in the state, and he's been picking up a ton of endorsements from prominent African-Americans in this community, including elected officials. And guys, as I sit here in North Carolina on this bus, I think it's probably worth noting that Mike Bloomberg is traveling around this state with the African American mayor of Columbia, South Carolina with him. He's endorsed him. And as Bloomberg likes to put it, North Carolina deserves a little love, too. So that's at least a little more competition for Joe Biden and some others. It is so interesting, though, because we see the shift in the Democratic primary

conversation about it really is about black and brown voters now, right? It's not just South Carolina. It's also Nevada. Is Biden walking away from Nevada? I don't think he is. He will be there over the weekend, I believe, with a lot of the other Democratic contenders. And I think that they are hoping for strong shows in both of these states. They're kind of running for both at the same time and investing a lot of resources in each. Look, this is a candidate that we've known for a long time. The core of his message to voters across these Democratic primary states has been electability. But it's hard to run on a message of electability if you don't win somewhere. So after finishing in fourth and fifth place in the first two early

state contests, he is very clearly looking for a win to keep that message going. As the primary turns south to these more diverse states, the Joe Biden's campaign has said since the get-go or someplace that he'd have a foothold. If Biden doesn't win South Carolina, how much of a blow is that to his chances in this race? I think it's hard to overstate how significant that would be. He has long said that African-American voters in the state that make up six and ten roughly of the Democratic primary electorate here that they know him. This is a state that he's forged relationships in for 30 some years now. And not just because he was Barack Obama's vice president. He has come here again and again. So if he did not win here after polls showed him for months with a sizable lead among the state's

voters, it could be devastating. But could also be an opportunity for candidates like Bloomberg, right, Don? Absolutely. If South Carolina has long been promoted as Joe Biden's firewall, if the firewall, I guess, goes up in flames, as it were, that certainly leaves an opening. And Mike Bloomberg has been making gains in the polls generally, but has also had a surprisingly kind of unexpectedly strong showing among African-American voters. And I think that's that's given the Biden campaign some pause. One question I'm curious from both of you as you've been spending this time on the road is the question of enthusiasm. What are you just sort of feeling on the ground in the conversations you have with voters right now? It's enthusiasm, certainly, but it's enthusiasm driven by anxiety, which is kind of a crazy kind of enthusiasm when you think about it.

It's fear that Donald Trump machine that's going to have their say. There are a lot of people here who are really dismissive of what has happened so far in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those states are overwhelmingly white. And voters here in this very diverse state say that those primaries and caucuses don't represent them. The other thing that I've come away with in talking to folks is that there are just so many folks here who have not made up their minds yet. They are still kind of figuring it out.

When I talk to a lot of voters, many of them want to wait to see what happens in Nevada, because they're reckoning with the chance that their favorite candidate, depending on who it is, they may not be in the race anymore. That's something we saw after New Hampshire with a handful of candidates dropping out. So there's a lot of hold your breath, wait and see happening in the state as well. I talked to Jim Clyburn, he's a Democrat from South Carolina, sort of one of the leading figures of the Democratic Party in that state. And he has said repeatedly that one of the things that you have to know about South Carolina is they really do look to what happened in the prior early state caucuses and primaries because they want to pick the winner. And so I think that's totally right that what

happens in Nevada could shake up what we know about South Carolina. Okay, well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about Michael Bloomberg. Support for NPR comes from Newman's Own Foundation, working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newman's Own food products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place. More information is available at newmansownfoundation.org. What's good, y'all? As you know, February is Black History Month.

And all throughout that month, NPR's Code Switch is going to be running a special series about the history of Black resistance. Because as long as Black folks have been oppressed in this country, which is, you know, forever, we've also been fighting back. Listen and subscribe. And we're back. And Don, you are out on the road with Bloomberg. Listen and subscribe. It's one of those things that happens when you rise in the polls. Suddenly things start to surface. So in 2015, he was at the Aspen Institute giving a speech,

and he was talking about New York City's Stop and Frisk program, which was in place and actually expanded while he was mayor. And the way he spoke about it in that tape that emerged was he seemed to be speaking positively about racial profiling and he was also talking about how this program targeted minority neighborhoods and of course there was an outcry many African American leaders you know called the remarks racist Bloomberg Bloomberg has apologized, not specifically for the remarks, but basically for supporting stop and frisk so long, which he now says is a bad policy. And he's

actually been saying that before this week. But the questions keep coming up. And ultimately, his response is not to explain what he said, but basically to say those words don't reflect the way he has governed, the way he has run his businesses, and the way he has lived his life. For people who don't know, how would you explain stop and frisk? It basically gave the police the ability to stop anyone who was suspicious on the street and do a quick check, frisk them, make sure they weren't carrying weapons. The goal was to get weapons off the streets and thus to reduce crime. But it was also a program that disproportionately targeted minorities, African Americans, and literally tens of thousands of people were subject to search when they were doing absolutely nothing wrong. Juana, do you hear much talk about Bloomberg among voters that you're talking to in South Carolina and beyond?

Like, is he catching fire at all among voters? Yeah, you know, I do actually. I think part of that is owed to the fact that, as Don mentioned, the mayor of the city has endorsed Michael Bloomberg as, I believe, a national co-chair of his campaign and out there on the road on his behalf. But Mike Bloomberg, despite the fact that he's not playing in the early states, I can't turn on my TV here without seeing an ad from either him or Tom Steyer. So he is courting voters here. People are interested in him. They like the fact that he has experience. I've got to tell you, I talked to one woman who told me she was undecided. She wasn't sure if she'd vote for Mike Bloomberg, but she thought that this party needed a candidate who was looking towards the South and being forward-looking and looking at those slew of Southern primary states that will be on Super Tuesday and beyond. And she liked that Mike Bloomberg was already going and investing there and having those conversations where she felt like a lot of the party's other candidates had really only been

focused on the early four primary states, two of which aren't representative in terms of demographics of the rest of the Democratic electorate. Millions of Americans are getting to know more and more of Michael Bloomberg from his ad campaigns, his unprecedented ad spending. But Don, you've been on the road with him. What's he like on the stump? When he's on the stump, he makes it clear that the reason he's running is to beat Donald Trump. He argues that he's the one who can go toe to toe against Trump. And he goes through this litany where he compares himself to Trump in dramatic fashion. He breaks promises, I keep them. He divides people, I unite them.

He's a climate change denier. I'm an engineer, I actually believe in science, imagine that. His events have been really crowded. Every room he's in has been packed over the past couple of days. Define packed. More than a thousand people at a community center in Chattanooga yesterday. It held about 400, so there was that many again spilled out into the hallway, into an overfull room, and then more outside who couldn't get in, so they set up speakers and piped it out there so they could give a listen.

So there's been really good enthusiasm, but a lot of people do still come undecided. So it's not unusual to find people who are deciding between Bloomberg and Biden or Bloomberg and Klobuchar and the occasional Bloomberg and Warren choice somebody's making. I haven't heard anybody yet who can't decide between Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders. Do you get the sense that other candidates are starting to take Bloomberg seriously? Like, do they need to start attacking him or campaigning against him? Like he's a real contender in this race? Yeah, I think they absolutely do. And the best example of that is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who after a disappointing finish in her neighboring state of New Hampshire, I think is trying to find a foothold. She's been out today attacking

Michael Bloomberg for the comments he made about redlining or the practice of denying mortgages to largely black neighborhoods. The Associated Press unearthed some old comments he'd made about redlining, and she's now taking him to task over that because he is so present in the media with these ad campaigns and is starting to grow support. Just like with any candidate, I think you're going to see the attacks and the scrutiny continue to come. Well, I know you guys have events, campaign events to go to, so I'll let you do it. That's a wrap for today, but we'll be back tomorrow in your feeds. And until then, you can keep up with all the latest updates by heading to NPR.org, listening to your local public radio station or on the NPR One app. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Don Gagne. I cover national politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.