Billionaire Michael Bloomberg was accused of pandering to Hispanic voters after sniping at a reporter in Miami's Little Havana where he corrected a reporter's pronunciation of Texas, adding to a series of embarrassing moments among candidates awkwardly, or offensively, courting Hispanic and Latino votes.
Trailing the former New York mayor, a reporter asks: "You spent a lot of time in Texas?"
He responds: "Tejas, you'd say here."
"What did you say? Tejas?" the reporter asks.
Mr Bloomberg says: "Tejas. That's Spanish for Texas ... You're in a Cuban neighbourhood, so you got to know your audience."
The clip went viral on social media, where people mocked yet another case of candidates injecting Spanish words or phrases into their campaign without any substantive efforts to reach those communities.
"I feel like Mike really gets me as a Texan after watching this" joked Twitter user Jessica Fletcher.
"Wow hard to see how bloomberg loses texas now", said progressive activist Jordan Uhl.
Texas is among more than a dozen Super Tuesday states, with Democratic candidates vying for a share of the state's 228 delegates, with a substantial Hispanic and Latino population that could determine the state's winner.
He also insisted to reporters in Miami that he doesn't plan to drop out of the race and back Joe Biden as he's criticised as a moderate obstructionist peeling votes away from the former vice president as moderate consolidate support around the candidate.
Mr Bloomberg told reporters that "the only way" he believes he can win is at a contested Democratic convention, in which no candidate has a clear majority of delegate votes to earn the nomination.
Asked whether he believes he's taking votes away from Mr Biden by remaining in the race, said: "Joe's taking votes away from me. Have you asked Joe when he's going to drop out?"
