COLUMBIA, S.C. — As Bernie Sanders sought to broaden his exposure on Saturday in the first presidential primary state in the South, he was joined by a controversial traveling companion: Cornel West, an African-American academic who’s been highly critical of President Barack Obama.
West introduced Sanders to a racially mixed crowd of close to 1,000 people in the gymnasium of Benedict College, a historically black institution, as someone who could unite the country across racial lines and bridge other divisions.
“What I love about Brother Bernie is he’s a brother of integrity and honesty and decency,” said West, a prolific author and civil rights activist who is now a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary in New York. “He’s not just on the move. He’s going to win.”
West, whom Sanders referred to as “my dear friend” and physically embraced on stage, was scheduled to join the senator from Vermont at two more events on Saturday in South Carolina, where black voters could account for about half the voters in next year’s presidential primary.
Sanders, who represents a state that is about 95 percent white, has acknowledged that he faces a challenge in getting to know minority voters, who could be key to his fate following the first two Democratic nominating contests in predominantly white Iowa and New Hampshire.
Recent polls have shown Sanders leading Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire and either closing in or in a dead heat with her in Iowa. But Sanders continues to lag far behind the former secretary of state in more limited South Carolina polling. Clinton is well-established and remains well-liked among African Americans in the Palmetto State. West, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, was once a popular thought leader among African-Americans, but his standing has been questioned more recently because of his harsh tone in criticizing Obama.
West has referred to Obama as “a Rockefeller Republican in blackface” and “a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” among other insults.
In a book published earlier this year, West said that Obama had betrayed the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“The dream of the radical King for the first black president surely was not a Wall Street presidency, drone presidency, and surveillance presidency with a vanishing black middle class, devastated black working class, and desperate black poor people clinging to fleeting symbols and empty rhetoric,” West wrote.
Sanders aides said that they welcomed West’s endorsement and that his support could help validate Sanders’ message with African-American voters.
Sanders’ appearances in South Carolina are part of a four-day Southern swing. He held a low-dollar fundraiser Friday night in Atlanta, has a rally planned Sunday night in Greensboro, N.C., and multiple stops Monday in Virginia, including a convocation speech to students at Liberty University, the conservative Christian school founded by evangelist Jerry Falwell, and a rally in Manassas.
