Sanders claims victory in California primary
WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders seized victory in Super Tuesday’s biggest prize, California, while a resurgent Joe Biden scored wins in the upper Midwest and black strongholds in the South.
The two Democrats, lifelong politicians with different visions for America’s future, were battling for delegates as 14 states and one U.S. territory held elections that marked the most significant day of voting in the party’s 2020 presidential nomination fight.
As of midnight, Biden had won in eight states, according to projections based on unofficial results. Those states were Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Sanders was projected the winner in Vermont, Colorado and Utah.
The statewide outcome in Texas remained uncertain hours after polls closed with Sanders and Biden in a tight race. The race in Maine also was too close to call.
The clash between Biden and Sanders, each leading coalitions of disparate demographics and political beliefs, peaked on a day that could determine whether the Democrats’ 2020 nomination fight will stretch all the way to the party’s July convention or be decided much sooner.
It was increasingly looking like a two-man race.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren had yet to post any early wins, and she lost her home state of Massachusetts to Biden.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
sole victory was in the territory of American Samoa.
Bloomberg plans to reassess today whether he should stay in the race after spending more than a half-billion dollars on his campaign.
A person close to the Bloomberg campaign confirmed the deliberations. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter by name and requested anonymity.
Bloomberg, the world’s ninth-wealthiest man, has a $61 billion net worth.
Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s campaign manager, said the campaign’s “No. 1 priority remains defeating Donald Trump in November.”
The 14 states that voted Tuesday were the first in which Bloomberg’s name appeared on the ballot, after he skipped the first four voting states. It’s an unorthodox strategy that has never worked before, yet the scale of Bloomberg’s spending was unprecedented.
“When you come in late to the game and you are someone who has a record, you can’t assume you can just wash that away with spending. You’re still gonna have to answer questions, and you’re still gonna have to be vetted,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton aide.
VOTING COMPLICATIONS
Complicating the night, deadly tornadoes knocked out polling places in Tennessee, fears over the coronavirus left some Texas precincts short of election workers, and long lines frustrated voters in California and Texas as Super Tuesday sent voters surging to the polls in 14 states.
Scattered reports of polling places opening late, machines malfunctioning or voter rolls being down temporarily disrupted voting in some of the states Tuesday, but there were no widespread reports of voters being unable to cast ballots or of security breaches.
Just hours before polls were set to open in Tennessee, tornadoes tore through parts of the state, killing at least 24 people. With more than a dozen polling sites in Nashville’s Davidson County damaged, voters were sent to other locations, where some of them encountered long lines.
Voter file databases were down or slow in some counties in California and Texas.
In Texas, elections officials in the Houston area were sending additional voting machines to polling places after people reported hourslong wait times. A voting-rights group said the problem seemed most acute in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
In Minnesota, a poll-finding tool on the secretary of state’s website was briefly inaccessible on Tuesday. Republicans cried foul when visitors to the site were redirected to a left-leaning website that also supplied polling place information. Secretary of State Steve Simon said a staff member had linked to the partisan site in what he called “a serious lapse of judgment.”
The Texas secretary of state’s office had reports that voters were receiving robocalls stating — incorrectly — that Republicans would vote on Tuesday while Democrats and independents would vote today.
Fears of the coronavirus temporarily disrupted voting as the day began. In Travis County, Texas, home to the city of Austin, many election workers did not show up, with some citing fears of contracting the virus, according to the county clerk’s office. The election office said it implemented emergency procedures, with elections staff and other employees filling in as poll workers.
U.S. intelligence chiefs have warned that foreign interference remains a threat for the 2020 election, but the national agency that oversees election security said Tuesday that it had not detected any notable uptick in either misinformation by foreign nations or targeted attacks on voting equipment.
VICTORY SPEECHES
Biden, the former vice president, and Sanders, the threeterm senator from Vermont, took aim at each other in dueling victory speeches separated by 2,500 miles Tuesday night.
“People are talking about a revolution. We started a movement,” Biden said in Los Angeles, knocking one of Sanders’ signature lines.
Without citing his surging rival by name, Sanders swiped at Biden from a victory speech in Burlington, Vt.
“You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics,” Sanders declared, ticking down a list of past policy differences with Biden on Social Security, trade and military force. “This will become a contrast in ideas.”
Sanders drove himself and his wife in their Subaru to his local precinct in Burlington. “I want to make sure we get at least two votes in Vermont,” he said as he made his way through a throng of reporters and supporters.
His campaign aides were taken aback by how rapidly many in the party’s establishment had moved to support Biden, but they said they relished the debate over the direction of the party.
Biden racked up the victories despite being dramatically outspent by moderate rival Bloomberg, who poured more than $19 million into television advertising in Virginia alone. Biden, meanwhile, spent less than $200,000.
As he did in South Carolina, Biden rolled to victory in the four Southern states that voted Tuesday, thanks in large part to black voters: More than 60% of blacks voted for him. Just as worrisome for Sanders, in Virginia and North Carolina — two states filled with suburbanites — Biden performed well with a demographic that was crucial to the party’s success in the 2018 midterm elections: college-educated white women.
For his part, Sanders continued to show strength with the voters that have made up his political base: those under age 40.
The Democratic race has shifted dramatically over the past three days as Biden capitalized on his commanding South Carolina victory to persuade anxious establishment allies to rally behind his campaign. Two ex-rivals Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg abruptly ended their campaigns and endorsed Biden.
Sanders had predicted victory in California, the day’s largest delegate prize. The state, like delegate-rich Texas, plays to his strengths, given its significant factions of liberal whites, large urban areas with younger voters and strong Hispanic populations.
COMPETING VISIONS
In Biden and Sanders, Democrats have a stark choice in what kind of candidate they want to run against Trump in November.
Sanders is a 78-year-old democratic socialist who relies on an energized coalition of his party’s far-left flank that embraces his decadeslong fight to transform the nation’s political and economic systems. Biden is a 77-year-old leader of his party’s Washington establishment who emphasizes a more pragmatic approach to core policy issues such as health care and climate change.
Sanders just days ago appeared to be en route to a significant lead in delegates after a near-win in Iowa and victories in the second and third contests, New Hampshire and Nevada. Biden seemed to have been on the verge of being forced from the race, after successive fourth-, fifth- and distant second-place showings. But after his victory in South Carolina, moderates rapidly coalesced behind the former vice president, rivals dropped out and endorsed him, and he racked up margins of victory so large that Tuesday’s races were projected as victories immediately after polls closed.
Across the Super Tuesday states, there were early questions about Sanders’ assertions that he is growing his support from his 2016 bid.
Biden bested him in Oklahoma, though Sanders won the state against Hillary Clinton four years ago. And in Virginia, where Democratic turnout surpassed 2016 by more than 500,000 votes, Sanders’ vote share dropped significantly.
Despite having held only one rally there — and opening only one Virginia field office and spending far less than some of his rivals — Biden carried the state. As soon as polls closed in North Carolina — a state that has a strong number of suburban women and black voters, both targets for the party and groups that lean in Biden’s direction — he was declared the winner there as well.
Biden likewise had not been able to afford offices in Alabama, but he swiftly won there, too. He was largely powered by big margins among women, black voters, moderates and those without college degrees.
He also appeared to benefit from high turnout in the same kinds of suburban areas that helped Democrats win the House majority in the 2018 midterms, winning by huge margins in suburbs around Richmond, Va.
Biden has also started getting backing from disaffected Republicans, who have been changing their registrations or publicly coming out in support of the person they see as best positioned to defeat Trump. In Virginia, longtime conservative Bill Kristol was voting for Biden, as was former FBI Director James Comey. The latter’s decision prompted a rebuke from Biden’s campaign.
“Yes, customer service? I just received a package that I very much did not order. How can I return it, free of charge?” Andrew Bates, the head of Biden’s rapid-response team, wrote on Twitter in response to a tweet from Comey saying he was backing Biden. Bates later said it was “a lighthearted joke — not a rejection.”
WARREN RESOLUTE
Warren has stayed in the race, asserting that she would remain a contender until the convention, when she hoped to exert pressure on the party platform even if she were not the nominee.
After voting at a precinct near her home in Massachusetts, Warren spent Tuesday night in Michigan.
Facing a roaring crowd, she called on her supporters to ignore the political pundits and predictions as her advisers insist she’s willing to go all the way to a contested convention in July even if she doesn’t claim an outright victory anywhere.
“Here’s my advice: Cast a vote that will make you proud. Cast a vote from your heart,” Warren declared. She added: “You don’t get what you don’t fight for. I am in this fight.”
As she prepared to walk down her front steps to go vote, she could hear supporters chanting: “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time for a woman in the White House.” As she walked into a school to vote, children dropped red and white rose petals.
“What I see happening is a lot of folks trying to turn voting into some complicated strategy,” Warren told several thousand supporters in Detroit. “They are playing games about prediction and strategy. Prediction has been a terrible business.”
However, Biden was victorious in both Warren’s home state of Massachusetts and her birthplace, Oklahoma. Warren finished in third place in Massachusetts.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii won a delegate from American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific. Under current rules, that could allow her to qualify for debates, although the Democratic National Committee indicated it will soon increase the threshold.
With votes still being counted across the country, The Associated Press has counted 362 delegates to Biden, 285 to Sanders, 30 to Bloomberg, 20 to Warren and one for Gabbard. The numbers were expected to shift throughout the night as states report their numbers and as some candidates hover around the 15% vote threshold they must hit to earn delegates.
The nominee must ultimately claim 1,991 delegates, which is a majority of the 3,979 pledged delegates available this primary season.
The Democratic race has shifted dramatically over the past three days as Biden capitalized on his commanding South Carolina victory to persuade anxious establishment allies to rally behind his campaign.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Will Weissert, Zeke Miller, Brian Slodysko, Kathleen Ronayne, Alexandra Jaffe, Christina A. Cassidy, Adrian Sainz, Frank Bajak, Jill Bleed, Jake Bleiberg, Kate Brumback, Stefanie Dazio, Justin Pritchard, Ben Fox, Eric Tucker, Doug Glass, Juan Lozano, Jonathan Mattise and Jay Reeves of The Associated Press; by Matt Viser, Chelsea Janes, Michael Scherer, Sean Sullivan, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Annie Linskey of The Washington Post; and by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns of The New York Times.