Pete Buttigieg has surged to first place in Iowa in a CNN poll released over the weekend. The poll is the second, following a Monmouth University poll last week, which places the South Bend mayor as the frontrunner in Iowa.
CNN reports: “The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, holds a clear lead in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, climbing to 25% in a new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. That marks a 16-point increase in support for Buttigieg since the September CNN/DMR poll. This survey comes on the heels of other recent polls that have shown Buttigieg joining the top tier of the Democratic primary race in Iowa.Behind Buttigieg, there is a close three-way battle for second with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 16%, and former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders each at 15%. Since September, Warren dropped six percentage points and Biden slipped five points, while Sanders gained four points. Surveying the rest of the field, no other candidate gets double-digit support.”
In other news, The Intercept published a report that three high-profile Black leaders were surprised to find themselves on a letter heralding Buttigieg’s Douglass Plan for Black America, and claimed “the campaign was ‘intentionally vague’ about the way it was presented.” The campaign later said it had given people a chance to opt-out of appearing on the letter.
At least one of the three people named in the article, Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Devine, tweeted over the weekend that she does support the plan though she has not endorsed a candidate.
The Buttigieg campaign responded to The Intercept with a lengthier statement: “Our campaign is working to build a multi-racial coalition, and we sought and received input from numerous Black policy experts and advisers to create a comprehensive plan to dismantle systemic racism: the Douglass Plan. We asked a number of Black South Carolinians, as well as South Carolinians from many backgrounds, to support the Douglass Plan, and we are proud and grateful that hundreds agreed to do so.In the HBCU Times op-ed and in communications with the press, we’ve been clear that not every supporter of the plan is Black, and have never claimed otherwise in any public communication. We never gave the impression publicly that these people were endorsing Pete, only that they supported the plan. After they indicated their support, we reached out to people multiple times giving them the opportunity to review the language of the op-ed and the option to opt-out. We did hear from people who weren’t comfortable being listed and we removed them. Pete will continue to talk about the Douglass Plan wherever he goes, regardless of the audience, as there are many communities of Americans committed to eradicating racial inequity.”
