Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Unconventional Yang now on slog for votes
Entrepreneur goes by book as contests near
DAVENPORT, Iowa — On a recent swing through Iowa, Andrew Yang was moving through his stump speech, a string of stories and statistics that can sound like an economics seminar. There was talk of flawed indicators and his signature plan to give a monthly check to every American. He warned about a dark and near future where America’s highways are filled with trucks driven by robots. One crossed the U.S. last month with a trailer full of butter. “Google it,” he said.
But with the first votes of the Democratic primary due to be cast within weeks, a woman inside a crammed coffee shop had a more immediate concern for the 44-yearold entrepreneur who has become one of the surprise survivors of the long contest: What if we go to caucus for you on Feb. 3, she asked, and you don’t have enough support to win delegates? Why should we waste our votes?
After months of running on unconventional campaign strategies, cool branding and novel ideas, Yang has arrived at a new point in the 2020 campaign: one governed by the conventional rules of election and where the idea that matters most is your strategy for winning. The candidate powered by the online buzz is now trying to make it on the real, and often uncool, campaign trail through Iowa and New Hampshire.
While other second-tier candidates in the race are planning to use money and advertising to make an end-run around those early voting states, Yang says he is largely sticking to the traditional path.
His campaign staff has grown from about 30 people last summer to over 300, most in early voting states, and he has hired some well-known political hands, including the ad team from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. He has paid for it all with strong online fundraising, raising more than $16 million in the final quarter of last year.
And the candidate who loves to talk about number crunching, data and his plan to use a Power Point during his State of the Union address assured the woman in Davenport that she didn’t need to worry. “We have done the math,” he said, a nod to his campaign slogan Make America Think Harder, abbreviated on hats and pins as just MATH.
But major challenges remain for a campaign that has compared itself to a startup and that saw most of its early success online, with supporters who were mostly young and male.
Yang did not meet Democratic National Committee polling requirements to participate in next Tuesday’s debate, the first time he has failed to make the stage this election cycle. A Des Moines Register/CNN poll released Friday showed him with 5 percent support in Iowa, well behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Yang and his supporters complain that his campaign hasn’t received as much media coverage as it deserves, a grievance aired enough to make #mediablackout trend on Twitter. This week a cable news station included him in a graphic showing recent fundraising totals but mistakenly used a photo of Geoff Yang, founder of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, rather than the candidate.
Andrew Yang said he raised enough money last quarter to reach voters in the final weeks before voting starts and continues to see strong fundraising numbers. He also is getting some help from celebrity endorsements, including comedian Dave Chappelle, who will perform at a fundraiser in South Carolina, and actor-musician Donald Glover, who recently joined Yang’s campaign as a creative consultant.
“Americans are very smart and they recognize the truth when they hear it … and their contributions have given us a chance to make this case to the American people out there, all through the primary season,” Yang said after a stop in Tipton, Iowa, a rural community in a county that supported Republican Donald Trump in 2016.