NY Times: Bernie Sanders Intrigues a South Carolina Town That Loves Hillary Clinton
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — When Helen Duley was asked whom she would be voting for in the South Carolina primary, she answered as if the very question were absurd.
“What I’m seeing is a bunch of confusion, hearsay and foolishness,” said Ms. Duley, 60, a retired nursing assistant who is African-American, shortly after finishing breakfast here at the downtown McDonald’s. “What I also see is a veteran who’s already been in the White House eight years. A veteran: Hillary Clinton.”
But that was late January. Interviewed again on Tuesday as Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was surging toward an overwhelming victory in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Ms. Duley found herself suddenly intrigued by a candidate she barely knew. “It makes me feel good,” she said, chuckling, “that young people are listening to the elderly people.” Ms. Duley now said she was an undecided voter and planned to do some homework on Mr. Sanders, despite respect for Mrs. Clinton that spans nearly a quarter-century.
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Still, the fact that black voters strayed from Mrs. Clinton in 2008 is fueling the hopes of Mr. Sanders’s loyalists. They believe that many African-Americans will defect to him once they are familiar with his left-of-center policies. State Representative Justin T. Bamberg, from neighboring Bamberg County, recently abandoned Mrs. Clinton and endorsed Mr. Sanders. As of Wednesday, he was one of five black state legislators who had endorsed Mr. Sanders, compared with 22 who had endorsed Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Bamberg, 28, said he had made the switch after learning more about Mr. Sanders’s history, which Mr. Bamberg summed up as a long fight for “racial, social and economic justice.” He predicted that the primary vote would be closer than polls suggest.
“Bernie Sanders is killing the game when it comes to young voters,” he said. “They’re not just saying, ‘I’m going to vote for him.’ They’re working and using social media. You’d think they’re on his campaign team, and they’re not.”
One challenge, supporters say, is helping black voters get to know Mr. Sanders, whose home state, Vermont, can sometimes seem so exotic as to be almost foreign.
“His name never comes up,” Clyde Wilson, a black forklift driver, said in late January, as he polished off a plate of chicken at a local diner called the Biddie Banquet. “He might as well be Bernie Madoff.”
Two weeks later, however, Mr. Wilson, 38, said that Mr. Sanders had at least become part of the conversation among his friends and relatives.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/us/bernie-sanders-intrigues-a-south-carolina-town-that-loves-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0
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