De Blasio Going To Another Key Presidential State This Weekend

NEW YORK — Bernie hasn't scared him off. Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to travel this weekend to South Carolina, another key presidential primary state, as he continues to mull a White House run.

The Democratic mayor and first lady Chirlane McCray will appear Saturday morning at a breakfast hosted by the Northeast Democrats Club in Columbia, the state's capital. The pair will also attend a roundtable event in Columbia that afternoon and a church service in Orangeburg on Sunday morning.

De Blasio will have some company in the Palmetto State. U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, one of several Democrats hoping to unseat President Donald Trump, will hold a town hall event Saturday morning in St. George, which is about 71 miles southeast of Columbia.

The swing through the home of the South's earliest presidential primary will come about two weeks after de Blasio's trip to Iowa, which will hold the nation's first caucus.

South Carolina is among the more diverse early primary states as 27 percent of its population is black, U.S. News and World Report wrote in 2016. De Blasio has found strong support among black voters as mayor — exit polling showed that 96 percent sided with him in the 2013 election, and 84 percent of likely black voters were behind him in a poll conducted roughly a month before his 2017 re-election.

The mayor has repeatedly said that he is not ruling out a run for president despite skepticism about his chances. Even McCray has said the "timing is not exactly right" for her husband to launch a White House bid, though she reportedly denied making the claim.

De Blasio has continued to consider entering the race even since Sen. Bernie Sanders jumped in last month. The mayor has praised Sanders's political influence, and the senator swore de Blasio in at his second inauguration.