Democratic hopefuls look to Super Tuesday

Will Weissert

WASHINGTON – Nevada votes next and then South Carolina. But top Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination are already looking to the biggest prize on the primary calendar: Super Tuesday, the slate of contests when more than a dozen states go to the polls.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren was to hold a town hall Thursday night in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Virginia, a day before Sen. Bernie Sanders makes two North Carolina stops, then hits Texas. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will campaign in California

between fundraisers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

All four states vote March 3, along with a crush of others, from Alabama to Colorado and from Maine to Utah, as well as Warren’s home state of Massachusetts and Sanders’ native Vermont. More than 1,300 delegates to the Democratic National Convention are at stake, about a third of the total.

The focus on Super Tuesday comes at a pivotal point in the campaign. For Sanders and Buttigieg, who have emerged in strong positions after contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, the travel gives them an opportunity to show their national appeal and woo larger concentrations of nonwhite voters. For struggling candidates like Warren, it’s a signal that they are still in the fight.

And for everyone, it’s a chance to prove they won’t cede this swath of delegate-rich states to Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor who has spent months building his campaign around Super Tuesday. He campaigned in Tennessee on Wednesday and will be in Texas and North Carolina on Thursday.

Bloomberg, who is self-funding his campaign, skipped the first four states to deploy a political shock-and-awe campaign, spending heavily on TV ads while already hiring more than 2,100 staffers in 40 states and U.S. territories, including all voting on Super Tuesday.