Fresh from their man's nearly triumphant performance in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night, Pete Buttigieg's political team told Newsmax they were going all-out to win the South Carolina primary Feb. 29.
"No doubt we're competing in South Carolina," Lamell McMorris, the national co-chairman of Buttigieg's campaign, told Newsmax shortly before the networks declared Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a narrow winner in New Hampshire over the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor.
McMorris, a Washington, D.C., public relations executive and sports and entertainment promoter, dismissed current polls showing Buttigieg in single digits in the Palmetto State.
"People were attracted by Pete's message of inclusion in Iowa and New Hampshire and they will be in South Carolina," McMorris told us.
Even before Joe Biden abandoned New Hampshire Tuesday to focus on South Carolina, a Post and Courier Change Research Poll completed last week showed the former vice president slipping among likely primary voters in the state.
Having once commanded leads as high as 30 percentage points over any opponent, Biden was down to a lead of 27% to 19% over Sanders, according to the poll.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, who has focused on South Carolina for months, had an unusually high 17% in the survey, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., (10%) and Buttigieg (6%).
Along with being the first southern state in which Democratic hopefuls will compete for votes and delegates, the Palmetto State is also a state in which — for the first time in the Democratic presidential contest — a majority of primary votes are likely to be cast by blacks.
McMorris dismissed polls showing the candidate known as "Mayor Pete" having problems with black voters.
"Look, it's not that people don't like Pete — it's that they just don't know Pete," said McMorris, who is black and a graduate of the historically black Morehouse College. "When they see his program for black entrepreneurship and for black colleges, they'll know he has the most comprehensive message of all the candidates."
Last year, Buttigieg signed on Jarvis Houston, a top black political operative from New York, to run his South Carolina campaign. So far, 33 paid staffers are mobilizing the Hoosier man's campaign in the state.
As it took on a decisive role in no less than six Republican nomination battles since 1980, South Carolina may well be pivotal for whoever Democrats eventually nominate to face President Donald Trump in November.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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