Axelrod Highlights How African-Americans Are Doing Worse In South Bend Under Buttigieg

EXCERPT:

AXELROD: “African-Americans are about a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate. Once you clear those early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, they come into play. And in South Carolina, 60 percent of the voters will be African-American. So, as a practical matter, he has to solve this problem or he's going to go back to South Bend. And that is a problem. South Bend itself is a bit of a problem for him because even though he has this very far reaching Douglass Plan to try and fight systemic racism in this country, there are troubling issues back home about police staffing, which African-Americans dropped by half under his watch, and on city contracting, where African-American -- where minority businesses have done rather poorly in sharing in the business of the city, even though 40 percent of the city is black and Hispanic. These are questions that I asked him. We had some interesting exchanges on it. And, you know, he has to solve it. And I think his campaign knows he has to solve it, which is one reasons why he was out there with an 18-page plan yesterday to try and deal with a whole range of issues affecting the community."