By Paul Steinhauser | Fox News
Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar exited the White House race in the past 24 hours – moves that will likely help consolidate moderate Democratic support for former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid to prevent populist and progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders from capturing the Democratic presidential nomination.
But centrist Mike Bloomberg isn’t ready to follow in their footsteps, saying on the eve of Super Tuesday that “I’m in it to win it.”
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The announcements Sunday evening by the former South Bend, Ind., mayor and Monday afternoon by the senator from Minnesota came in the wake of Biden’s landslide victory Saturday night in South Carolina over front-runner Sanders and the rest of the field – a win that was much larger for the former vice president than expected.
Their moves came as establishment Democrats and party leaders — increasingly terrified in recent weeks at the prospect of Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, as their party’s standard-bearer in November’s election — increased their calls for the remaining more moderate presidential candidates to drop out of the race to allow for a consolidation around Biden.
But Bloomberg – who jumped into the race in late November and who skipped the four early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – is on the ballot for the first time on Tuesday, when 14 states from coast-to-coast hold contests and one-third of all Democratic presidential nomination delegates are up for grabs.
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And the former New York City mayor and multibillionaire business and media mogul – who’s shelled out some $200 million of his own money to run ads and build up an impressive campaign structure in the Super Tuesday states – appears to be in no rush to end his three-month-old White House bid.Whoops! We couldn’t access this Tweet.
“I talked to mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar both. … I wished them all the best. I think both of them behaved themselves in a nice way — to phrase it — and they represented their country and states very well but I’m here to tell you I’m in it to win it,” the candidate told reporters, including Fox News’ Kelly Phares, at a campaign event in Virginia.
Biden’s Lone Star push
A confident Biden pledged during a speech in Houston Monday that “we won in South Carolina, and we’ll win in Texas tomorrow.”
Texas is the second biggest prize on Super Tuesday, with 228 delegates at stake in a longtime red state that Democrats hope may trend blue. The latest polls in the state show Sanders leading Biden and Bloomberg – but vary dramatically by how much he’s ahead. And the surveys were all taken before Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out and nearly entirely before Biden’s massive victory on Saturday night.
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Fox News confirmed that Klobuchar will join Biden on stage at a campaign event in Dallas on Monday night, and Buttigieg is also expected to join Klobuchar in endorsing Biden in person.
Sanders in the driver’s seat in California
California – with 415 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday – has by far the biggest haul of delegates up for grabs in the presidential nomination calendar.
Sanders has spent a lot of time and poured a ton on resources into the state this cycle. As Fox News Andrew Craft spotlighted, the Sanders campaign touted that nearly 25,000 people showed up for rallies the senator held Sunday in Los Angeles and San Jose.
“The candidate who wins California has an excellent chance to win the nomination,” he told the massive crowd in Los Angeles.
The latest polls – taken over the weekend and before the Buttigieg and Klobuchar news — show Sanders enjoying healthy double-digit leads over Biden and Bloomberg.
Biden’s endorsement shock and awe
In the wake of Biden’s overwhelming victory in South Carolina, his campaign’s been unleashing a torrent of endorsement from current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors and other prominent Democrats.
The campaign released 16 over the weekend, and the wave continued on Monday.
Among those backing Biden on Monday included former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Reps. Marcia Fudge of Ohio and Gil Cisneros of Texas, and Obama-era national security adviser Susan Rice.
The Sanders campaign pushed back against the flurry of endorsements.
“Establishment is nervous not because we can’t beat Trump but because we will. And when we do, the Democratic Party will again be a party of the working class,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told Fox News.
Pro-Biden super PAC hauling in campaign cash
“Unite the Country,” the pro-Joe Biden super PAC, tells Fox News its fundraising is “coming fast and furious” since the former vice president’s landslide victory Saturday evening in South Carolina.
A top adviser with the PAC adds that the major surge in fundraising “really stared after the debate.”
That’s a reference to last Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary debate, where Biden’s muscular performance grabbed headlines and won reviews from political pundits.
On Friday Unite the Country told Fox News that it raised over $2.5 million on Thursday, in the post-debate euphoria.
The aide told Fox News on Monday that top-dollar donors who’ve yet to contribute to the PAC are now “starting to get off the sidelines and discussions are now being scheduled”
On Friday, the PAC told Fox News that the six-figure digital ad buy in the Super Tuesday states was ballooning to seven figures.
Monday, the PAC told Fox News that as of today, it’s making ad buys to go up with spots in the states that vote next week on March 10.
The outside group’s mission has been to level the playing field for the fundraising-challenged campaign to be able to compete with Sanders extremely large campaign war chest that’s been fueled by a massive intake of small-dollar grassroots donations, and with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by Bloomberg.
But Biden’s big win in South Carolina is starting to fill his campaign coffers. His campaign touted they raised $5 million online on primary day in the Palmetto State.
Fox News’ Kelly Phares, Madeleine Rivera, Andres del Aguila, Andrew Craft, and Alex Rego contributed to this report, Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
