‘Spin room’ is frenzy of activity
Following a three-hour debate Tuesday night, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota takes her shoes off and stands on a box to be able to look Chris Hayes of MSNBC in the eye during their interview in the spin room of Otterbein University’s Rike Center.
Perhaps the tallest candidate in the field, former Texas Rep. Beto O’rourke, struck a more-serious tone in his post-debate scrum, doubling back on South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg regarding a confrontation the two had on the debate stage about a mandatory buyback of assault weapons.
O’rourke supports such a buyback, but Buttigieg said Tuesday that it is impractical.
“When he described the pursuit of a mandatory buyback to take these 16 million AR-15 and AK-47S off the streets as ‘chasing a shiny object,’ I thought it was so offensive to everyone who has survived gun violence, lost someone to gun violence or fears gun violence in their lives right now,” O’rourke told reporters. “People are smart. They know those weapons have no place in our communities and homes.”
O’rourke’s spin on Buttigieg: “Either he’s missing the point on this, or he’s being driven by the polling.”
Buttigieg was among four candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii — who didn’t take a turn through the spin room.
Still, there were enough candidates for a small parade and that caused
media members to descend on them once they hit the floor. Andrew Yang paused along the runway to answer questions from television reporters. Billionaire Tom Steyer closely followed him along the barrier that separated candidates from waiting media members.
Yang, who wants to give every American a “universal basic income” of $1,000 a month, still had enough energy after spending three hours under the hot lights of the debate stage to bounce from one foot to another like a boxer after hugging and high-fiving Dawson.
Dawson spent much of her time in the spin room watching as Booker did interviews with cable networks, joking with reporters that she figured Booker, who casually drops on the debate stage that he’s a vegan, was hungry.
Booker said he wanted to use his time at the debate to talk about what he believes in, not hammering the ascending Warren as other candidates did.
Sen. Kamala Harris picked her own fight with Warren during the debate, challenging her to join in demanding that Twitter suspend Trump’s Twitter account. Harris bounced from doing an interview with CBS News to one with
MSNBC, for which she was quickly led back behind the barrier away from the crush of reporters elbowing their way in to ask questions. She lingered along the barrier before jumping on the set of CNN’S post-debate show.
O’rourke’s fellow Texan, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, drew a small crowd of reporters in a corner of the spin room, where he opined that the candidates weren’t veering too far left for voters of Ohio while lamenting how little time he got to talk during the debate.
“I made the most of the time I did have,” he said. “I’m going to continue to go out and continue to fight for folks who don’t have a voice in this process.”
The biggest attraction of the night — for both her opponents and media members — was Warren, who skipped through a side entrance after finishing a live interview with MSNBC without talking to a gaggle of reporters. Minutes later, a voice over the loudspeaker declared that the press filing center would close in five minutes at 1 a.m., two hours after the debate ended.
Round and round it goes.