Pete Buttigieg Sounded the Alarm on Black Voters. South Carolina Democrats Sat in Silence.
- Javar Juarez
- 27 minutes ago
- 8 min read
In Florence, Buttigieg connected Black political power to voting rights, infrastructure and economic survival—but the party still must prove it is prepared to invest in the Black communities it depends upon.
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC | August 22, 2026
FLORENCE, S.C. — Before former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took the stage at the Spratt Issues Conference, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Dr. Annie Andrews issued a challenge to South Carolina Democrats.
Andrews, a pediatrician and public-school mother, laid out an agenda encompassing health care, public education, reproductive freedom, gun safety, economic relief and democratic reform. She then asked every Democrat in the room to do more than applaud: register voters, knock on doors, make calls, donate and work as if victory depends upon them—because it does.
Soon after, Buttigieg told reporters that Andrews has “a great opportunity right now to surprise the pundits and to win this state.” He argued that Republican economic failures have created an opening for candidates running on how Democratic policies can improve people’s lives.
Andrews supplied the urgency. A legislative panel supplied the material stakes.
Buttigieg supplied the political diagnosis.
Together, they illustrated both the possibility before South Carolina Democrats and the party’s persistent failure to understand the Black voters upon whom that possibility depends.
The conference was held at the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center in Florence, a city where Black residents make up nearly half of the population. Holding the conference in Florence brought the state Democratic Party beyond its usual base in Columbia and into the heart of the Pee Dee.
Yet the audience appeared predominantly white.
At several moments when Buttigieg spoke directly about Black political power, racial exclusion and the systematic disempowerment of Black communities, the room grew noticeably quiet.
That silence was telling.
Democrats are comfortable celebrating Black voters after an election has been won.
They remain far less comfortable confronting what it costs—in money, institutional power and sustained attention—to earn those votes before Election Day.
The budget is a statement of who matters
The conference’s first panel, moderated by Ralph Prioleau, featured Sen. Ronnie Sabb and Reps. Roger Kirby and Terry Alexander.
Its stated subject was the state budget, but the real subject was whether the government will make meaningful investments in communities that cannot finance basic necessities on their own.
The discussion centered on funding commonly dismissed as “earmarks.” Sabb rejected that stigmatized term and called the appropriations what they are: community reinvestment projects.
That distinction is not semantic. It is political.
Kirby explained that many rural towns lack the tax base to provide basic services. He described a small municipality that could not afford even a police vehicle. The same funding mechanism can support water and sewer systems, recreation centers, schools, public-safety equipment and other necessities that wealthier communities can fund locally.
Sabb acknowledged that some organizations have misused public money and argued for accountability. But isolated abuses, he warned, cannot become an excuse to abandon an entire method of investing in communities operating on shoestring budgets.
Alexander connected the budget debate to the Republican campaign to reduce taxes without admitting what those reductions mean.
“Any time we have a decrease in taxes, there’s a decrease in services,” he said.
People want clean water, paved roads, functioning schools and dependable public services. Those things require revenue.
Republicans have mastered the politics of attacking taxes while communities are left to endure the predictable consequences: deteriorating roads, inadequate infrastructure and fewer services.
Alexander also challenged voters to examine who is making decisions locally and in Columbia. If South Carolinians want different outcomes, he argued, they must change the people they send to the State House.
That may sound elementary, but it is an essential reminder. Elections are not abstractions.
They decide whether a rural town receives a sewer system, whether a child eats during the summer, whether a teacher can afford health care and whether an aging bridge gets repaired.
An audience member brought the argument home by noting that Latta’s only grocery store had closed, forcing residents to travel elsewhere for healthy food. Mattie Thomas, a Florence County school board trustee, pressed the panel on water, sewer and roads, correctly recognizing that communities cannot recruit businesses or create durable growth without the infrastructure to support them.
Roads create access. Water sustains life and health. Sewer systems protect public hygiene. Schools, community centers and public transportation help determine whether a place can retain its people and expand its economy.
This is the built environment—and shaping it is civil-rights work.
Buttigieg connected Black political power to Black economic outcomes
Buttigieg’s most important contribution was his willingness to connect political representation, racial justice and the conditions of everyday life.
He described the Republican push to manipulate districts and suppress participation as a project to disempower voters rather than persuade them.
He specifically addressed the dismantling of Black representation across the South and argued that political unfairness produces economic consequences.
In his discussion with Christale Spain chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Buttigieg said South Carolina’s importance comes partly from its racial, geographic and economic diversity.
Any national candidate seeking the presidency should have to speak to rural communities, manufacturing, agriculture and “a racially diverse state that has been on the business end” of the disempowerment of Black and Latino citizens.
In the press conference afterward, he went further.
Asked what Democrats must do to energize Black voters, Buttigieg described Black political participation as a direct response to Republican efforts to suppress Black power through gerrymandering.
He argued that South Carolina has an opportunity to demonstrate how voting rights, political fairness and economic outcomes are connected.
He also acknowledged what too many Democrats avoid saying: “A lot of working families have felt taken for granted by Democrats.”
That sentence should be printed and placed on the wall of every Democratic Party office in South Carolina.
If all Democrats do is talk about Donald Trump and Republican failures, Buttigieg said, then they are not talking about the voter. The question must become concrete: What will happen to your grocery bill? Your health-insurance premium? Your rent or mortgage? Your childcare costs? How much money will you earn, and will one job finally be enough?
Black voters do not live outside those economic pressures. Black families are disproportionately affected by inadequate infrastructure, inaccessible health care, underfunded schools, low wages, food deserts and political decisions that drain public resources from their communities.
A Black voter strategy that does not address those conditions is not a strategy. It is an Election Day extraction plan.
Reconnecting communities requires more than repairing roads
Columbia’s Broad River District offers a local example of what it means for a community to be divided and endangered by highway infrastructure. More than $127 million in infrastructure improvements were completed in the district after decades of disconnection caused by the state highway system.
During the press conference, Buttigieg was asked about the Reconnecting Communities pilot program rolled out during his administration. The question was rooted in the experience of Broad River residents, who spent years organizing around the Carolina Crossroads project as its expansion moved deeper into surrounding neighborhoods.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation initially resisted providing some of the protections residents believed their neighborhoods needed.
Black leaders working through the Broad River Business Alliance challenged the agency, examined complex planning documents and organized residents to demand sound and exhaust barriers, safer road designs and stronger long-term protections for the community.
The experience demonstrated why infrastructure decisions cannot be left entirely to government agencies and engineers. Residents who live with the consequences must have the information and power to shape the projects built around them.
Buttigieg explained that the federal government created Reconnecting Communities after recognizing that highways and railroads had frequently been routed through communities—often Black communities—that lacked the wealth or political power to resist or reshape those projects.
Where federal funding had contributed to the damage, he said, federal funding could become part of the solution.
That same principle should guide the Democratic Party.
Where political institutions have neglected Black communities, political resources must be used to rebuild power within them. Where Democrats have relied upon Black turnout without building Black-led organizations, they must correct that imbalance.
Where the party has borrowed Black culture, credibility and labor without adequately funding Black organizers and media, investment must replace exploitation.
Buttigieg noted that during his tenure, the Department of Transportation increased contracts with small, disadvantaged businesses by nearly $2 billion and awarded $435 million to HBCUs, including Benedict College and South Carolina State University. He emphasized that these investments were neither charity nor favors. They recognized that the institutions’ excellence benefited the country.
That is the framework Democrats should adopt toward Black political leadership.
Funding Black leaders, organizers and Black-owned media is not patronage. It is an investment in people with the community relationships, cultural knowledge and credibility required to build a durable Southern strategy.
The party cannot keep borrowing what it refuses to build
Buttigieg argued that political trust will be rebuilt from the ground up. He described local politics as an exercise in listening—meeting people, learning what is happening in their lives and developing answers rooted in factual reality.
That is exactly why South Carolina Democrats must move beyond a strategy dominated by consultants, donor circles and familiar gatekeepers.
Black communities are not interchangeable. The needs of Broad River are not identical to those of Florence, Lake City, Latta, Orangeburg or rural Williamsburg County.
Serious organizing begins with understanding those local differences and investing in leaders who already know them.
Democrats often come into Black communities when they need sound, soul, creativity, cultural legitimacy and votes. But when it is time to allocate campaign money, media spending, staffing and long-term institutional support, Black-led organizations are too often treated as an afterthought.
The party wants the benefit of Black infrastructure without paying to construct or maintain it.
That approach has produced cynicism and justified distrust. Black voters are not apathetic because they do not understand politics. Many are disengaged because they understand all too well what happens after their votes are counted.
The challenge before Democrats is not simply to tell Black voters that Republicans are worse. It is to demonstrate, through visible investments, that Democratic leadership can make daily life better.
Sabb, Kirby and Alexander showed what that can mean in the state budget: roads, water, sewer, schools, food access, public safety and gathering spaces.
Andrews showed what it requires electorally: candidates, volunteers and urgency.
Buttigieg supplied the larger call to action: defend Black political power, reform a broken system, address the material pressures on working families and rebuild trust locally.
The message was present in Florence. The question is whether the Democratic Party is prepared to receive it.
South Carolina Democrats cannot ask Black voters to rescue the party while refusing to finance Black leadership.
They cannot claim to value Black communities while leaving the infrastructure of those communities underfunded.
They cannot keep borrowing Black culture, Black labor and Black credibility without building Black power.
If Democrats want a Southern strategy capable of winning, they must stop treating Black voters as the final step in an election plan.
Black communities must be where the plan begins.
Javar Juarez is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Urban Broadcast Network (CUBN), an independent investigative news outlet based in Columbia, South Carolina, and a member of the South Carolina Press Association. He is also President of the Capital City Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
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