Very real scenario

The very real scenario of a protracted, ‘bizarro world’ Democratic primary

The dynamics have changed so much that states voting after Super Tuesday are suddenly taking on new prominence.

By DAVID SIDERS

Democrats are now beginning to confront a very real scenario where the nomination — and the winnowing — will not be decided in states where campaigns have been plowing ground for more than a year, but in places and calendar dates so deep into primary season that until recently they’ve received almost no attention at all.

The Iowa field is bunched together with little daylight between a handful of well-funded candidates. Each of the four early voting states continues to present the prospect of a different winner. And, at the end of that gauntlet on Super Tuesday, a free-spending billionaire — Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor — is waiting to challenge whichever candidate or candidates emerge.

It’s a unique set of circumstances that has the campaigns — and party officials — scrambling to make sense of the reconfigured landscape.

Looking at the possibility of a still-contested nomination even after Super Tuesday’s massive delegate allocation on March 3, Washington state Democratic Party chair Tina Podlodowski said mid-March will “probably matter more than ever before.”

One strategist working with a presidential candidate said, “We’ve never had a situation where we get past Super Tuesday and there’s still five people in the field,” predicting that possibility this year.

“We’re in bizarro world here,” the strategist said.

Over drinks at a hotel bar in Austin last month, several Democratic Party state chairs were discussing how the presidential primary dynamics had changed so much that the states voting after Super Tuesday are suddenly taking on new prominence.

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman, Ken Martin, suggested to Podlodowski and Michigan Democratic Party chair Lavora Barnes — whose states vote one week after Super Tuesday — that they should call their March 10 election date “Little Tuesday,” Podlodowski recalled.

This year, she said, it might just be “the little primary that could.”

Coloring the thinking of many Democrats is Bloomberg’s apparent willingness to spend limitless sums, leaving him poised to overwhelm their early operations across the Super Tuesday map.

For most candidates, said Scott Kozar, a Democratic ad-maker who is helping Sen. Michael Bennet with his campaign, "No one is playing in those states."

He predicted the candidates still standing after Super Tuesday will be forced to run a “fast play” as they scramble into March.

In addition to flooding the airwaves with television ads, Bloomberg has already put more than 200 staffers on the ground in states that vote in March and April. He traveled recently to Ohio and Michigan, where he has hired senior state-level staff and plans to open 9 offices and 12 offices, respectively.

His campaign told POLITICO he plans to open five offices in Missouri, 17 in Florida and 12 in Illinois.

“Before Bloomberg got in, I said whoever wins South Carolina on February 29 will be the nominee because of the momentum factor” coming out of the first four primary states, said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member from California. “Bloomberg kind of puts a pause on that.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with one of the field’s most robust ground operations, has had post-Super Tuesday staffers flung out across the country for months, with a presence in Missouri , Michigan, Washington, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to an aide. And Sen. Bernie Sanders has an army of volunteers held over from his 2016 campaign.

But for every other Democrat, the landscape following Super Tuesday’s gigantic delegate hauls on March 3 is relatively barren — and will likely remain so until after the initial primaries.

“Super Tuesday is typically a wild scramble, and anybody who’s still surviving is usually limping a little bit in terms of money. They’re spread thin in terms of where to go,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist. “Campaigns can’t pay to have simultaneous overhead in all of the early states and all of the next round of states with quality people. So they put all of their best people in early states and then cut and paste them into the next states.”

For later states, said Matt Bennett, a veteran of the 2004 presidential campaign and a co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, “The strategy is wait and pray. There is no other strategy … I just think you basically ignore it, and then they’ll frantically run around in those states for a week.”

While smaller than California, Texas and other states voting on March 3, the following two weeks of primaries will test candidates’ geographical reach and ability to campaign in large, diverse states, including some general election bellwethers.

The March 10 primaries include not only Michigan and Washington, but also Mississippi and Missouri. Florida, Illinois and Ohio come one week later, on March 17, when more than 500 delegates are at stake.

Adding to the complexity of the primary map is that early voting practices are creating a dynamic that, in some states, is supplanting election day with an election month.

“It’s not as clean as just saying, ‘These are the March 3 states, these are the March 10 states, these are the March 17 states,” said Pete Kavanaugh, former Vice President Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager for states.

He added that “based on the calendar and the delegate math, it's entirely possible that this stretches throughout the spring."

David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, predicted his state will “loom large, depending on how things shake out,” but that even in a contested election, “it generally develops late.” Four years ago, Hillary Clinton used a drubbing of Sanders in Florida and Ohio to pull away from the Vermont senator in the delegate race after Sanders’ stunning victory in Michigan the previous week.

If multiple candidates are still competing in mid-March this year, Pepper said Ohio “could play a tiebreaker role.”

Democratic strategists in Florida and Illinois express similar optimism, and the money that candidates raised last quarter suggests that any number of Democrats may remain competitive by the time the campaign reaches their states. Six Democrats raised more than $10 million in the fourth quarter of last year, including four candidates — Sanders, Biden, Warren and Pete Buttigieg — who each raised more than $20 million.

But even with that money, the imperative to spend heavily in early states is already spreading candidates thin. Multiple campaigns are relying heavily on volunteer efforts in later-voting states, sometimes with staffers from headquarters overseeing efforts in multiple states.

Barry Goodman, a Biden bundler in Michigan, said the campaigns’ infrastructure is not yet developed sufficiently even to take advantage of would-be donors or volunteers in late March states.

In addition to holding “a list of people who want to work for [Biden] in Michigan,” Goodman said that for the sake of fundraising, “I need him to be in town. It’s hard to raise money … unless he shows up, or unless a strong surrogate shows up.”

Doug Ballard, a DNC member from Arizona, which votes on March 17, said that except for Warren, he hasn’t noticed any significant organizing efforts in his state.

“We’re just too far down the line, I guess,” he said.

Jill Alper, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, said that “with so many candidates in both different and overlapping lanes who will be financed potentially longer, it probably does mean many of them will make their way through the calendar into the post-Super Tuesday states.”

Alper said that with digital advances in campaigning, “there are other ways than bricks and mortar to connect and excite and organize people.”