Democrats focus on Super Tuesday even as South Carolina looms

CHARLESTON, S.C. » Bernie Sanders will swing through North Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts in the coming days. Elizabeth Warren will make stops in Texas and Arkansas. Amy Klobuchar will be in Tennessee and Virginia.

The South Carolina primary is just two days away, but the race is quickly going national as candidates pivot to the 14 states that vote on Tuesday.

The move is in part a recognition of Joe Biden’s strength in South Carolina, with most of the focus on the margin of his victory and who might come in second place. But it’s also an effort to tap into the hundreds of delegates at stake in the “Super Tuesday” contests. About a third of the delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination will be on the table.

The tight turnaround between Saturday’s primary in South Carolina and the contests that follow on Tuesday is creating a hectic stretch for campaigns.

New York bi l lionaire Mike Bloomberg has sought to bypass the traditional early voting states including South Carolina to focus exclusively on the Super Tuesday states. But even he had to balance the competing demands as he qualified for Tuesday’s debate in Charleston. He went back to New York after the debate only to return to South Carolina the next day to appear at a CNN town hall.

Bloomberg will be in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina — all Super Tuesday states — over the next several days.

The strains on some candidates are evident. Pete Buttigieg hopscotched from Nevada on Saturday to Colorado and South Carolina by Sunday morning. He then hit Virginia before returning to South Carolina.

But even a meticulously craf ted schedule can fall apart. Buttigieg had planned to swing down to Florida, which votes later in March, for three private fundraisers Wednesday. He abruptly canceled the events and a public campaign stop in the Miami area because of illness. His aides said he had flulike symptoms.

Buttigeig met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and did media interviews in Washington, D.C., before returning to South Carolina on Thursday for another round of campaigning.

Indeed, strategists in key Super Tuesday states say voters there are watching to see what happens in South Carolina before they make up their minds.

Texas offers the second- biggest delegate pot on Super Tuesday, with 228 pledged delegates, and Buttigieg and Biden are expected to campaign there after South Carolina votes. But other candidates, including Sanders, Warren and Bloomberg, have all made stops there this week.

Biden wasn’t doing much outside South Carolina, where his flagging campaign is seeking its first win of the primary season. Likewise, billionaire Tom Steyer has essentially hunkered down in the state, while Bloomberg, who participated in the debate, has all but ignored the early four contests and instead will campaign across a handful of Southern states that vote next week.

Buttigieg was not alone in trying to stir fundraising events into the mix. Klobuchar held a fundraiser in Charleston on Monday and was to duck out Thursday for one in North Carolina and another Friday in Tennessee, along with campaign events in both states over the two- day stretch.

And Sanders had plans to dash up to North Carolina, a conveniently situated March 3 primary state, on Wednesday and again Thursday, when he also plans to cross into Virginia. While other candidates are making their final pitches in South Carolina, Sanders was also scheduled to make two campaign stops in Massachusetts, home turf for Warren and a critical Super Tuesday state.