Impact2020 Briefing: March 4, 2020
Welcome to your Impact2020 briefing for Wednesday, March 4. Of note today: Joe Biden had a Super Tuesday turnaround that is still reverberating around the country, California served as Bernie Sanders’ firewall and Michael Bloomberg bows out.
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On the Ground
And suddenly, it’s a two-man race
It was quite the 72 hours for Joe Biden. A huge win in South Carolina revived his campaign on Saturday. But it was Super Tuesday that cemented his viability and arguably lifted him to frontrunner status in the Democratic race. The former vice president racked up unexpectedly big victories across the south Tuesday night, including in North Carolina, Jim Morrill reports for the Charlotte Observer.
Despite a minimal campaign infrastructure in the state, Biden also managed to eke out a stunning win in Texas over Bernie Sanders, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Anna M. Tinsley writes.
California, the night’s biggest delegate prize, ended up serving as Sanders’ firewall, The Sacramento Bee’s Bryan Anderson and Sophia Bollag report. The size of his victory won’t be clear for days or even weeks, however. As Anderson explains, mail-in ballots will continue to be received and counted through Friday.
One night only
Somewhere, someone who is better at math than I am can break down exactly how much each vote Michael Bloomberg won on Super Tuesday ultimately cost him. All told, the former New York City mayor spent more than half a billion of his own fortune for one night of voting, before bowing out of the race and endorsing Biden.
As the Miami Herald’s Alex Daugherty and Bianca Padró Ocasio write, Bloomberg’s decision “comes a day after he campaigned throughout Florida and said he had no plans to drop out. But he only won one Super Tuesday contest, the caucus in tiny American Samoa, and didn’t reach the 15% threshold to receive delegates in a number of states, including Texas and California.”
What does it all mean?
A few things are clear after a whirlwind week. One: earned media coverage is vastly more valuable than paid media and campaign staff in today’s nationalized political environment. As I wrote with McClatchy Political Correspondents David Catanese and Alex Roarty, “Biden didn’t have the field staff planted on the ground over the past year that Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren did” in many Super Tuesday states.
“He certainly didn’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars that Bloomberg had to air an arsenal of commercials and set up a massive campaign operation. What the former vice president did have was familiarity with voters — and a comeback storyline that reassured the psyche of nervous Democrats who desperately wanted to back a winner.”
Read all our hot takes from last night here.
Trail Mix
March Madness
The Portland Press Herald’s Eric Russell reports that “higher-than-expected turnout among registered Democrats in Maine led to a ballot shortage in some communities and ... delayed the official declaration of a winner in the party’s closely contested presidential primary.” The AP called the race for Biden Wednesday afternoon.
After a Super Tuesday of “coast-to-coast losses, including a humbling third-place finish in her home state,” Warren “is mulling her next steps as a presidential candidate in a field that could be running away without her,” Liz Goodwin and Jess Bidgood write for the Boston Globe.
WisPolitics.com reports that Warren is now the third presidential candidate to run TV ads in Wisconsin.
Biden’s campaign unveiled a list of proposals Wednesday aimed at curbing opioid addiction, just six days ahead of the March 10 primary in Missouri, which has seen a steady rise of opioid-related overdose deaths, the Kansas City Star’s Bryan Lowry reports.
MLive’s Malachi Barrett writes that Sanders “needs a big victory” in Michigan’s primary on March 10 “to keep Biden at bay.”
Though she’s been critical of Biden in the past, Georgia Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikema Williams announced that as one of the state’s superdelegates, she would support the winner of Georgia’s March 24 primary, which “could matter if the nomination is still in doubt come July,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein writes.
Los Angeles voters reported long wait times and operational errors at a number of the county’s newly designed vote centers on Tuesday, suggesting “an inauspicious beginning for L.A.’s first fully redesigned election system in more than half a century,” John Myers, Luke Money, Liam Dillon and Alejandra Reyes-Velarde report for the Los Angeles Times.
Battle for Congress
North Carolina Democrat Cal Cunningham, a lawyer, former state senator and former Army prosecutor won the primary to face incumbent Republican Thom Tillis in a race that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, Brian Murphy reports for The Raleigh News & Observer.
The Raleigh News & Observer’s Will Doran, Lucille Sherman and Lynn Bonner report that Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning won the Democratic primaries for recently redrawn congressional districts in North Carolina, and will now be favored to win the Democratic-leaning seats in November.
MJ Hegar is headed to a runoff in Texas’ Democratic Senate primary, but the race for second remains too close to call, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Tessa Weinberg reports.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Luke Ranker writes that GOP Rep. Kay Granger “escaped possibly the roughest challenge of her more than 30-year career in an election that politicos labeled ‘weather vane’ for the future of the Republican Party.”
Alabama’s crowded Republican Senate primary is headed to a runoff, pitting former Attorney General and Sen. Jeff Sessions against former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, John Sharp reports for AL.com.
Number of The Day
1.3 million
The number of Virginians who voted “in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, breaking the record set 12 years ago when Barack Obama faced Hillary Clinton,” the Richmond Times Dispatch’s Mel Leonor reports.
For Planning Purposes
March 4
Biden holds a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Calif.
“I Broke a Nail”
Biden may have dominated the Super Tuesday returns but his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, and senior advisor Symone Sanders dominated Twitter after physically blocking two anti-dairy protesters at Biden’s rally in Los Angeles. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Rob Tornoe noted that it was the second time in the span of the month that self-described “good Philly girl” Jill Biden “has been forced to act as her husband’s security guard.”
Even More
For even more 2020 politics, download the latest episode of McClatchy’s Beyond the Bubble podcast, taped in South Carolina: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcast
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 3:00 PM.