Super Tuesday’s shake-up has some voters frustrated
Buttigieg, Klobuchar dropping out leaves some thinking their early votes ‘won’t matter’
With candidates dropping out and new endorsements reshaping the field on the day before California’s highstakes Super Tuesday primary, Democratic voters are facing a race for the White House that has shifted dramatically in just a few days.
And many who already cast their ballots are feeling frustrated as they wake up on Election Day.
“It’s disappointing to think my vote won’t matter,” said Carol Frost, a San Jose librarian who sent in her ballot for Amy Klobuchar weeks ago.
The Minnesota senator on Monday became the latest to drop out of the race and throw her support behind former Vice President Joe Biden. He also picked up the endorsements of Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke.
Biden shared a stage at a Dallas rally with his former rivals Monday night in an attempt by his campaign to project party unity, before heading to California today for a campaign stop in Oakland and an election night event in Los Angeles.
But Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s been solidly out front in California polls, painted the endorsements as a sign that the establishment was against him and ramped up his attacks on Biden on Monday, saying his past votes on issues of trade and foreign
policy were out of step with Democratic voters.
Now, the biggest question going into Super Tuesday is whether Biden can consolidate enough moderate support to hold his own in California. Or, with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren also splitting votes, will Sanders be able to take a huge lead in the state and rack up a massive delegate advantage?
More than a dozen states are up for grabs today, and California, with 415 pledged delegates at stake, is the biggest prize of them all.
After weeks of disappointing election results in early states, Biden’s campaign won a new lease on life from his huge victory in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday. In addition to the support from his former rivals, his campaign announced dozens of endorsements Sunday and Monday from Democratic leaders around the country, including former California Sen. Barbara Boxer.
“It would be a huge surprise if Biden won (California), but he has a very realistic chance of coming in a respectable second,” said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. Democratic leaders rallying around him “creates the sense that he is the alternative to Sanders,” Pitney added.
But Bloomberg showed no sign that he would join the other moderates in bowing out for Biden, telling reporters in Virginia that he’s “in it to win it.”
Bloomberg is the only one of the top four candidates who isn’t scheduled to campaign in California during the last days before the primary. But he’s still been an unavoidable presence in the state thanks to his barrage of TV ads.
Sanders’ campaign also is still on the air here, as is a Super PAC supporting Warren. And even candidates who had dropped out still had ads popping up, in a ghostly specter of their past campaigns: On KTVU, an ad for former San Francisco hedge fund chief Tom Steyer ran twice in less than five minutes on Monday morning, sandwiched between Bloomberg ads.
After big rallies in San Jose and Los Angeles on Sunday, Sanders tried to push his advantage in other Super Tuesday states on Monday, waving away Biden’s new endorsements.
“The establishment will rally around establishment candidates,” Sanders told reporters Monday before holding a rally in Utah. “That’s the simple reality.”
Warren is also hoping that she can draw some Buttigieg and Klobuchar fans, as all three campaigns had a similar base of educated white voters. Warren made a late play for California, with plans to speak in East Los Angeles on Monday and releasing a new plan to protect farmworkers’ rights.
It’s unclear yet how many of Buttigieg’s and Klobuchar’s California supporters will follow their lead. Supporters of the Midwestern moderates added up to about 13% of the California electorate in the latest polls, only slightly lower than Biden’s own average.
Just two weeks ago, Biden wasn’t the top second choice of the Buttigieg and Klobuchar supporters. In fact, he was the last choice, while Sanders was their top second choice, according to a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California taken between Feb. 7-17.
However, a lot has changed since that poll, which was taken before the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary — a lifetime ago in presidential politics. Biden’s big win in South Carolina and the stamp of approval from Klobuchar and Buttigieg likely will inspire many more voters to switch to the former vice president.
Already on social media, some California volunteer groups that had popped up to support Buttigieg had shifted to backing Biden (with a few calling on Biden to name Buttigieg as his vice presidential pick).
Karen Petersen, a cofounder of the grassroots group Silicon Valley for Pete, which had about 500 members, said nearly all of the Buttigieg supporters she had talked to in the last two days were planning to vote for Biden — if they hadn’t already sent in ballots for Buttigieg.
“It’s almost unanimous,” she said.
Even Buttigieg fans such as Kevin Dowling, a nonprofit fundraiser in Hayward who had flown to Iowa to volunteer for the candidate and said he’s “never been a really big Biden fan,” were changing their minds.
“It’s still kind of sinking in,” Dowling said of Buttigieg’s decision to quit the race. “Of course, he has 40 years to run for president again, because apparently now you can now run in your late 70s.”
Meanwhile, voters who already sent in their ballots for the candidates who dropped out are out of luck — there’s no procedure for a do-over in California, and voting a second time could violate state law.
More than 1.4 million voters in California have already sent back Democratic ballots, according to data from state political firm Political Data Inc. That means that Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer likely will win plenty of votes, and Buttigieg could potentially even pick up a delegate or two in some districts.
Several Bay Area voters who mailed in their ballots for the two Midwestern moderates said they felt frustrated that their voice won’t count.
“So much hangs in the balance tomorrow, and there are, I am sure, thousands of votes out there for candidates that pulled out,” said Frost, the Klobuchar supporter who would vote for Biden if she could. “I kind of feel like I followed the rules by voting early and helping the county out, and now I am penalized for it.”