Tuesday 03 March 2020
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Pete Buttigieg drops out of presidential race Former mayor’s withdrawal offers a big boost to Joe Biden’s campaign Demetri Sevastopulo and Lauren Fedor
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ete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who beat Bernie Sanders in Iowa, has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race following his disappointing performance in the South Carolina primary. Mr Buttigieg, 38, an openly gay military veteran, followed up his stunning victory in the Iowa caucuses with a strong second place finish in the New Hampshire primary. But he failed to attract non-white voters, winning only three delegates in Nevada last week and doing even worse in South Carolina on Saturday, signalling he would have struggled in the diverse states that vote on Super Tuesday on March 3. His decision to abandon the race before Super Tuesday could provide a big boost to Joe Biden. The former vice-president won the South Carolina primary by a 29-point margin on Saturday but still faces an uphill struggle to the Democratic nomination, in part because of the large number of moderates in the field vying to overtake Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. “Today is a moment of truth,” Mr Buttigieg told supporters in South Bend on Sunday night, as he announced his decision to withdraw his candidacy. “The truth is that the path has narrowed to a close, for our candidacy, if not for our cause. “We have a responsibility to consider the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and to win the
Pete Buttigieg has struggled to attract support from African Americans © Santiago Flores/South Bend Tribune/AP
era for our values,” he added. “And so we must recognise that at this point in the race the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together.” Mr Buttigieg’s withdrawal may put pressure on other centrist candidates, including Amy Klobuchar, to pull out of the race. Ms Klobuchar has likewise struggled to appeal to non-white voters, but is leading the polls in her home state of Minnesota, which will vote on Super Tuesday. Ms Klobuchar’s team did not respond to a request for comment about whether she intended to remain in the race. Mr Buttigieg had pitched himself as the younger moderate alternative to Mr Biden, a claim that he made more strongly after he came well
ahead of the former vice-president in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He also tried to sell himself as the best alternative to Mr Sanders, the self-declared democratic socialist who has called for an economic revolution and leads in the delegate count. Mr Buttigieg made a big effort to win black voters in South Carolina, but his campaign fell flat in the southern state. “Buttigieg had a decent amount of appeal to white voters, which you could see even in the exit polls in South Carolina, but he never did anything for non-white voters,” said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “That was a running theme of Buttigieg’s campaign since he emerged as a leading candidate, and he just never
figured that part out.” Mr Buttigieg’s poll numbers heading into Super Tuesday — when 14 state contests will award one-third of the total delegates ahead of the Democratic National Convention this summer — suggested he was in danger of winning very few delegates. Staying in the race would have hurt Mr Biden and made it more likely that Mr Sanders would head to the Democratic convention in Milwaukee in July with the biggest number of delegates, even if he did not have the 1,991 needed for outright victory. In recent weeks, Mr Buttigieg had fallen in national polls to fifth place on 11 per cent, just behind Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. Mr Sanders leads on an
average of 30 per cent, more than 11 points ahead of Mr Biden, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Mr Biden may get a bump in the national polls following his big win in South Carolina, which showed his strength — and Mr Sanders’ weakness — with African Americans. He had argued that South Carolina would be the “firewall” that would rescue his campaign and prove that he was the strongest candidate in more diverse states. The Rachman Review podcast Listen to the weekly podcast from Gideon Rachman, the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist, and listen in on his conversations with the decision makers and thinkers from all over the globe who are shaping world affairs The latest Morning Consult polling showed Mr Buttigieg’s supporters split over their second choice, with 21 per cent preferring Mr Sanders, 19 per cent backing Mr Biden, 19 per cent supporting Ms Warren and 17 per cent behind Michael Bloomberg. Mr Kondik said Mr Buttigieg’s exit from the race could provide Mr Biden with a big boost on Super Tuesday, especially among white voters in states such as Massachusetts and Minnesota. “As good as Biden did in South Carolina and as good as he might do in other southern states on Tuesday, the south is not enough,” Mr Kondik said. Many people in early voting states expressed enthusiasm for Mr Buttigieg but said they were concerned about his age and would rather vote for him in a future presidential election.
Sanders and Warren scare Big Tech but thrill its workers Progressive Democratic candidates receive most cash from tech workers ahead of Super Tuesday Dave Lee, John Burn-Murdoch and Alice Kantor
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emocratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have received the most donations from employees at California’s largest technology companies ahead of the crucial Super Tuesday primary contest — despite the progressive candidates’ threats to drastically curb the influence of Big Tech. Senators Sanders and Warren have each received roughly one-third of all donations from workers at Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, Uber and Apple, according to an FT analysis of Federal Election Commission data. The reasearch shows that their progressive politics still resonate in Silicon
Valley, the centre of the US high tech industry. This compares with 26 per cent for Pete Buttigieg — who dropped out of the race on Sunday night — 8 per cent for Joe Biden and 2 per cent for Amy Klobuchar. The candidates competing to take on president Donald Trump in November’s election have collectively poured millions of dollars into California, flooding the airwaves with ads and holding events across the state ahead of the March 3 primary. The Golden State, with its 415 delegates, is Super Tuesday’s biggest prize of the 14 states who vote that day. Donations to 2020 presidential candidates from employees of the state’s most prominent tech firms totalled $1.1m by the end of January 2020, accounting for 2.6 per cent of all donations by individuwww.businessday.ng
als in California who stated their employer ($42m). Mr Sanders and Ms Warren lead the way in small donations, with much of the money they have received coming from people giving between $50 and $1,000 over the past two years. This suggests that Mr Sanders and Ms Warren enjoy strong grassroots support, while other candidates including Ms Klobuchar and Mr Biden have received fewer, more generous contributions. In a sign of how important Big Tech workers have become as voters, Mr Sanders — who is hoping to establish a clear lead in the nomination race with a big win in California on Tuesday — was in San Jose, the largest city in Silicon Valley, on Sunday for a rally. The support of tech workers for the Vermont “democratic social-
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ist” and Ms Warren — who have both proposed dramatic new measures to limit the influence of Big Tech — illustrates how progressive political activism has flourished at many Silicon Valley companies. It also suggests there is a divide between the priorities of industry’s rank-and-file and the owners, founders and boards that have lobbied extensively against calls to restrict their power, pay more taxes or be split into smaller companies. Facebook’s lobbying bill in 2019 totalled $16.7m, while Google’s parent company, Alphabet, spent $12.6m, according to database OpenSecrets. “I’ve never volunteered with any campaign before,” said Janelle Jolley, 33, who until last August worked on Google’s search ads team. She now volunteers at the San Francisco field office for Bernie Sanders, based in the heart of the @Businessdayng
city’s predominantly Latino Mission District. Other candidates have enlisted Silicon Valley’s brightest and most powerful for their cause. Billionaire former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, for instance, who has spent half a billion dollars so far on a campaign that hinges on the outcome of Super Tuesday, poached Joshua To, formerly Google’s director of design for virtual and augmented reality, for his team. A source familiar with the move said Mr Bloomberg had personally contacted a high-level Google executive to help arrange the move to his campaign’s creative design team. Mr Bloomberg has also brought on Gary Briggs, Facebook’s former chief marketing officer, and Jeff Glueck, previously chief executive of location-based app Foursquare, to work on his campaign.