Trump moving GOP convention
Looks to wrap up nom with victories Tues., or soon after
Former vice president Joe Biden looked to formally clinch the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday in primaries held in seven states and the District of Columbia.
Biden won Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Rhode Island, South Dakota and New Mexico, The Associated Press projected.
Long lines were reported in the District of Columbia, where polls were to close at 8 p.m.
Biden needed to win 425 of the 479 delegates in Tuesday’s voting to bring him to the 1,991 delegates required for him to clinch the Democratic nomination on the first ballot. If he doesn’t clinch on Tuesday, he has other chances later this month — including New York’s primary June 23, when 274 Democratic delegates will be picked.
Full results weren’t likely on Tuesday, as absentee and mail-in ballots were expected to delay counting.
Four states — Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island — rescheduled their primaries from March and April to Tuesday because of the coronavirus pandemic, converting one of the lesser days on the primary calendar into a mini-Super Tuesday.
Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota had long planned primaries for Tuesday.
The most delegate-rich state on Tuesday was Pennsylvania, with 186 delegates, followed by Maryland with 96 and Indiana with 82.
Voting took place as cities were convulsed with protests and looting over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
In-person voting was down in every state, as voters were encouraged to vote by mail because of the pandemic. But long lines were reported in many polling places, including in minority neighborhoods of Philadelphia, where some polling stations are in police stations.
“Having to stand in line while police officers are entering and exiting the building on police business is not exactly how people want to spend their election day,” Erin Kramer, executive director of One Pennsylvania, told the AP.
Philadelphia pushed its curfew back to 8:30 p.m., 30 minutes after polls were expected to close.
The extent of Biden’s inperson campaigning for Tuesday’s primaries was a speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning on Floyd’s death and racial injustice in which he didn’t mention the primary. It was Biden’s first trip outside Delaware since the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Bernie Sanders — though he has stopped campaigning — still hopes to win delegates to influence the Democratic convention scheduled for Milwaukee in August, and remained on the ballot everywhere presidential balloting took place Tuesday. He needed 55 delegates Tuesday to keep Biden from clinching the nomination.
But Sanders, who has dropped out of the race, has no chance of winning the nomination at this point. Before Tuesday, he needed an insurmountable 77% of the remaining delegates to win, compared to 33% for Biden.
Several states held primaries for down-ballot offices on Tuesday — including Iowa, where GOP Rep. Steve King was fighting for his political life.
King — whose racism is so reviled by Republican leaders that they stripped him of his House committee assignments — had four opponents, including state Sen. Randy Feenstra, who is backed by former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and GOP political operative Karl Rove.
If none of the GOP candidates win 35% of the vote, the primary will be decided by a convention. King won the general election narrowly in 2018 against Democrat J.D. Scholten, who is running for the seat again and was unopposed in his primary.
President Trump declared Tuesday he wants the GOP convention moved out of North Carolina to a place with less restrictive coronavirus rules.
He blamed the change on North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, saying Cooper “and his representatives refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena” in Charlotte.
“Governor Cooper is still in Shelter-In-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised,” Trump griped on Twitter.
He went on: “We are now forced to seek another State to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.”
Cooper on Tuesday asked Republicans to propose a “scaled-down convention with fewer people.” Face coverings and social distancing rules would be “a necessity.”
The governors of Georgia and Florida — both Republicans, in states dominated by the GOP — have both expressed interest in hosting the convention, scheduled for late August.
“Hope you have Georgia on your mind,” George Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted to Trump on Tuesday night.