Inside the Buttigieg Campaign as Staff Members of Color Sought to Be Heard

Buttigieg advisers say the retreat was part of an ongoing effort to foster a progressive culture that empowered employees of color. For some of these staff members, however, the workplace itself was a problem, and working for a candidate with so little support from black and Hispanic voters had become demoralizing.

In interviews, current and former staff members of color said they believed that senior Buttigieg officials didn’t listen to their concerns and ideas about the campaign. One said there was a daily “emotional weight” on people of color who felt they were employed in order to help the campaign meet its ambitious diversity targets. Some Hispanic employees felt disrespected when managers asked them to translate text, even if they didn’t speak Spanish.

A follow-up meeting nearly two weeks after the retreat — organized by staff members — became emotional, according to two people who attended. Some employees of color spoke about feeling disrespected by white colleagues.

A second meeting, on Jan. 2, featured lengthy discussions of the importance of diversity in hiring and sometimes tearful descriptions of the difficulty of recruiting people of color to the staff, according to a recording of the session that was provided to The New York Times.

One employee also recalled a troubling incident for staff members of color: The campaign had planned a fundraiser with a donor who had helped try to suppress the release of video showing the police shooting of a black Chicago teenager. Some members of the vetting team had warned against doing the fundraiser with the donor as co-host. Campaign fundraising officials proceeded anyway, and at the last minute, amid an outcry, were forced to remove the donor as co-host and return his donation.

The Buttigieg campaign’s focus on staff diversity resembles, on one level, efforts found at many organizations. But most campaigns are fast-growing, fast-moving enterprises that rarely have time or money for in-depth workplace self-assessments or extensive inclusion and training programs. The situation at Buttigieg’s headquarters also stands out as unusual because of the unique set of pressures on a campaign and a candidate trying to become a trusted voice on matters of race.

In a statement, Buttigieg, 38, who recently finished his second term as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, nodded to those challenges and struck a progressive tone in emphasizing the importance of supporting his staff.

“We’re proud of the staffers who stood up and made their voices heard to help our campaign improve and be more inclusive,” Buttigieg said. “We realize that we can always do better and these honest discussions are how we make progress, and we will continue to provide our staff the safe space to have them.”

Vernon Gair, the accounting director for the campaign, who was made available by officials there, said that because of Buttigieg’s struggle to attract black voters, the campaign had to meet a higher bar internally in addressing the concerns of minority employees.

While polling still shows Buttigieg in a deep hole with black Democrats — a recent Washington Post survey found he had just 2% support nationwide — he has exhibited some signs of progress among black elected officials.

From the beginning, Buttigieg’s inner circle of top advisers, most of whom are white, went to great lengths to hire a diverse staff, and they say they reached their target number: 40% people of color, a high proportion that is usually a plus for campaign outreach to voters of color.

Yet as Buttigieg rose in the polls through last year, his struggle to win over black voters became the biggest threat to his chances, and pained many minority staff members.

In October, the campaign was rocked by revelations that among the hosts of a scheduled Chicago fundraiser was Steve Patton, a lawyer who had tried to block the release of footage of the 2014 police shooting of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald. After black leaders including Jesse Jackson objected, the campaign distanced itself from Patton.

When the group of about 70 staff members convened for the Jan. 2 “Building Belonging” session, several spoke emotionally about their challenges in recruiting and hiring a diverse workforce.

Katrina Smith, a young member of the vetting team, spoke about the episode involving Patton’s fundraiser, telling her colleagues that leadership had ignored her group’s warning that he was an inappropriate host.

“The decisions that were made on those committees that ended up impacting everybody on the campaign, especially people of color, were hard ones and were not considered appropriately because of the makeup of the committees,” Smith said, according to the recording. “In a lot of different places on the campaign, we kind of have to screw up big-time before we make any big changes.”

Buttigieg’s campaign said the retreat and follow-up meetings over the last two months, and other sessions throughout last year, showed its commitment to diversity, and its openness to having staff members voice their frustrations.

“I think there are some, you know, global issues that are not unique to our organization,” said Gair, the accounting director. “The purpose of the conversations was to create a safe space for folks to voice that with their colleagues.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .