Tom Steyer surges in South Carolina, backed by Black Women's Caucus

A South Carolina caucus for African American women will back Tom Steyer on Sunday, the group’s chair said, an important endorsement for the billionaire presidential candidate in the first state to vote in which most Democrats are black.

“This is a crucial election and black women need a candidate who’s going to champion our policies” from housing to reproductive rights and entrepreneurship, Mattie Thomas, chair of the Black Women’s Caucus of South Carolina, told Reuters.

South Carolina, where two-thirds of the Democratic electorate is black, comes fourth, on 29 February, in the state-by-state process of picking a Democratic nominee to face Donald Trump in November. The first nominating contest is on Monday in Iowa.

Public opinion polling once showed former vice-president Joe Biden with a more than 30-point lead in South Carolina, which he is counting on to cement his standing in a competitive race.

But Steyer, who polls in single digits nationally, has been gaining. A Post and Courier-Change Research poll released on Sunday showed Biden at 25%, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders at 20% and Steyer at 18%, up from 5% in December.

Steyer has hired more staff, appeared at more events and spent more money on advertisements in South Carolina than Biden.

Biden’s highest-polling opponents nationally, Sanders, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, have put more emphasis on the first two states to hold contests, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Thomas said the decision between Steyer and Biden was a bit of a “toss up” but said the billionaire “has his own record whereas Joe Biden is a part of the record” of the first black president, Barack Obama, whom he served as deputy.

There are no longer any black candidates among the leaders in the Democratic field, after candidates including senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris dropped out.