Salon.com editor Sophia Tesfaye said on Wednesday that the coverage surrounding South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign has been “inflated” by the news media.
“In a lot of ways, it resembles John McCain’s 2000 coverage about the maverick in that it was kind of inflated by D.C. and New York media,” Tesfaye, deputy politics editor at Salon.com, told host Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.”
“If you’re consuming that kind of media, then sure Mayor Pete is cool,” she continued.
“Voters of color in general, I don’t think they’re consuming that exact same media, not to say that MSNBC isn’t drawing tons of African-American voters, but I think that is what we’re seeing with Mayor Pete, this kind of media-driven, maybe bubble,” she said.
Buttigieg has risen in national polls as well as state surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire, and has won a lot of media attention — sometimes from viral moments.
But he hasn’t seemed to have made a dent with minority voters in the Democratic Party.
A Post and Courier-Change Research Poll released on Sunday found that Buttigieg had 0 percent support from likely primary voters in South Carolina who are black.
— Julia Manchester
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