“New Yorkers, they really are over the stop and frisk conversation,” added Tonya Rivens, an area radio and television personality who serves on the Bloomberg staff as the director of constituency here. “They really are.”

“I think Mike did the same thing I would’ve done,” Mitchell told the group. “When you see a problem, you try to address it. Stop and frisk was trying to make neighborhoods safe.”

Then it was the pastors’ turn to talk.

“Stop and frisk is connected to Eric Garner,” said the Rev. Robert Scott, the senior pastor at Charlotte’s St. Paul Baptist Church, referencing the unarmed man killed by cops on Staten Island in 2014, even as he kept saying, “I can’t breathe.”

“To Tonya’s comment about the people in New York,” Scott said, “the pastors in New York haven’t forgotten about stop and frisk. No.”

“I’m not feeling good about the stop and frisk,” said the Rev. Dwayne Walker from Charlotte’s Little Rock A.M.E. Zion Church. “At all.”

“I really that think he needs to do more than apologize,” said the Rev. Glencie Rhedrick, the associate minister at Charlotte’s First Baptist Church West. “I think it would be in his behalf for the black vote that he wants to get that he shows a little more empathy around that decision.”

“He’s got to show repentance,” Scott added. “It’s hard to give forgiveness when there’s no repentance.”

James thanked them for their feedback. “I would tell you,” he said, in a somewhat specious assertion, as the pastors readied to leave, “there’s a lot of momentum going our way.”

“We’ve got goodies over here on the table—T-shirts, placards, bumper stickers, buttons, yard signs,” Cannon told them. “We really would love for you to support Mike Bloomberg.”

Henrico White, the pastor of Charlotte’s Weeping Willow A.M.E. Zion Church, told me he believes Bloomberg can “overcome” the stain of stop and frisk. “I think most people at least appreciate someone trying to address the real hard issues,” he said.

In general, though, I was as skeptical as most of the pastors seemed to be.

“A huge issue,” Rhedrick said when we talked at the end of the event. “Candidates, people of European descent, are quick to apologize. But when the apology appears to be, ‘You just need to get over it,’ that leaves an extremely bad taste. We as people of African descent have experienced so much harm from our law enforcement, and when you add policies that give them liberty to do what they do without consequences for what they do when it’s unjust, that’s not going to get you elected.”

***

Two and a half miles away, on the edge of a part of town thick with breweries, coffee shops and taco joints, the Charlotte office of the Bernie Sanders campaign couldn’t be more different than the Bloomberg headquarters but is equally on-brand. It occupies space in a non-denominational church with an emphasis on social justice and “transforming broken systems in society that create human suffering.” The aesthetic: rug on a rustic floor, warm Edison lights, homemade art and signs on the walls.

“Why do you fight for Bernie??” reads a hand-lettered prompt on a poster. It’s filled with an assortment of responses from supporters and volunteers.

“So I can go to the doctor without worrying about rent.”

“He has fought long and consistent for us.”

“I want my democracy back.”

The official opening of the office was late last month, shortly after Sanders’ runaway victory in Nevada. The evening get-together crackled with zeal, and a conspicuous confidence. A field organizer who moved here from Iowa after the caucuses stood on the top of a table and led the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of 129 people in a chant.

“I believe that we will win!” she shouted.

“I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN!” the rest of the room roared back.

“Ray McKinnon, a county commission candidate, a Sanders-supporting member of the Democratic National Committee and an “automatic” delegate, and a black pastor, too, gave a rousing speech.

“We’re not a part of a cult! We’re a part of a movement!” he bellowed, as beads of sweat began to build on his bald head. “We’re not a part of a cult! We’re a part of a revolution! A political revolution! To say that it isn’t about us! It’s about the many and not just a few! It’s about saying to the moneyed interests, ‘Your time is up! Your time is up! If you scared, BE SCARED. ‘CAUSE WE COMIN’ FOR YOU!’”

The Sanders campaign can point to polls, too—and the latest public figures in the state show him trouncing Bloomberg with younger voters, beating Bloomberg with white voters and all but even with black voters.

***

The McColl and McCready Democrats of Charlotte agree on one thing: Sanders is a total no-go. I heard it again and again canvassing with Bondada and Tyagi, and I’ve heard it repeatedly from voters here in the run-up to this week.

But after that very shared aversion?

I’ve talked to people who are voting for Biden. I’ve talked to people who are voting for Warren. I’ve talked to people who planned to vote for Buttigieg (before he dropped out Sunday). I’ve talked to people who are voting for Klobuchar. And I’ve talked, to be sure, to people who are voting for Bloomberg, or who have already.

With Bloomberg, though, that support is complicated—and in a way that should worry a candidate who’s attempted to position himself as a better version of Trump.

For starters, that first debate was a disaster, a blow to his image as the above-the-fray safe play—the quantifiable ramifications of which won’t be known until Tuesday and perhaps not even then. People “were excited about Bloomberg,” said Carolyn Eberly, a chemist-turned-activist from suburban Waxhaw who led an Indivisible chapter to try to get McCready elected and now is supporting Warren. “But I think the debate in Nevada just kind of killed all that. At least that’s what I’ve heard locally.” Susan Roberts, a political scientist at Davidson College, just up the road, has heard similar sentiments. “Right now,” Roberts told me, “people that early voted for Bloomberg are having a bit of buyer’s remorse.”

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