Astead W. Herndon

Pressley announced her decision in an email to supporters Wednesday afternoon and released a corresponding video announcement.

“Elizabeth has made it her life’s work to pursue justice for working families and put economic and political power in the hands of people,” Pressley said in a statement. “We find ourselves in a fight for the soul of our nation, and I know Elizabeth can win it.”

In choosing Warren, Pressley provided her home-state senator with her most high-profile congressional endorsement to this point and avoided ruffling feathers in the closely knit Massachusetts Democratic Party.

She also split from her congressional cohort, as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan all endorsed the race’s other ardent progressive, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, last month.

Pressley was elected to Congress last year, after a grassroots, multiracial coalition lifted her to victory over Rep. Michael E. Capuano in Boston’s only majority-minority district.

She was the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, and her endorsement gives Warren a prominent black surrogate in a campaign that must gain traction with black voters in order to overtake former Vice President Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Warren has done significant outreach to black progressive groups and Democratic leaders over the past year — more than any other white candidate in the race. However, recent polls still show her trailing Biden among black voters by almost 30 points, and she lags in South Carolina, the early primary state where black voters make up more than 60% of the electorate.

“I have seen Ms. Warren in small church basements and in packed gymnasiums,” Pressley said in the video. “And she is consistent. She never loses sight of the people.

“You’ve all heard about the senator’s plans — but here’s the thing,” she added. “Her plans are about power: who has it, who refuses to let it go and who deserves more of it.”

The endorsement was a must-have for Warren, who has risen sharply in polls and fundraising over the last six months but has lagged in some traditional measures of party support, including endorsements from governors, big-city mayors or fellow senators outside Massachusetts. In recent weeks her campaign has sought to reverse that trend by lining up endorsements from anti-establishment progressive champions popular among the party’s left wing.

Rep. Katie Porter of California endorsed Warren over her home-state legislator, Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia announced his support for Warren’s campaign last month, her first endorsement from a big-city mayor.

Warren also recently rolled out endorsements from two of the country’s most progressive district attorneys: Larry Krasner of Philadelphia and Rachael Rollins of Suffolk County in Massachusetts.

Krasner, who supported Sanders in 2016, received some blowback for endorsing Warren over Sanders, who remains in striking distance in most polls.

“I have not forgotten and no one should forget that Bernie Sanders, early in his prior campaign for president, said the only reason he ran was that he couldn’t persuade his friend Elizabeth Warren to run for president,” Krasner said in response. “I heard what he said, and I remembered what he said.”

While Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib have become household names partly out of their willingness to upset the Democratic establishment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Pressley has gained a reputation as a cautious Capitol Hill operator.

Pressley, 45, was the first nonwhite woman elected to the Boston City Council in 2009 and had a robust local constituency before being elected to Congress. Unlike newcomers like Ocasio-Cortez, who speaks about how Sanders’ presidential run in 2016 helped motivate her to seek elected office, Pressley was a delegate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and has close relationships with the party’s traditional power brokers. She is also considered a prospective candidate for Warren’s Senate seat should Warren win the White House.

Some in Massachusetts have speculated that Pressley could play the role of television surrogate for Warren, serving as a progressive ally who would implicitly counteract perceptions of her campaign as geared toward white elites. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib are helping play a similar role for Sanders, and have held rallies with him in their respective home districts of New York City, Minneapolis and Detroit.

In Massachusetts, where the congressional delegation only comprises Democrats and where a contentious Senate primary is currently underway, Pressley’s endorsement speaks to the high-stakes political game of who to back — and when. Pressley was not a part of the initial round of home-state endorsements during Warren’s campaign launch earlier this year, leading to speculation that she would sit out the presidential primary or back Harris, the 2020 race’s only black woman.

Instead, Pressley joined Warren’s cause, politically cementing the informal friendship that has existed among them for years.

In 2018, when Pressley announced plans to run against Capuano, Warren stayed out of the race — a sign the grassroots campaign Pressley had built was exceeding expectations. Now, it’s Pressley playing power broker, as Warren seeks to usurp the establishment herself.

This article originally appeared in

Ayanna Pressley Endorses Elizabeth Warren for President

Rep. Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, the only member of the group of progressive first-term congresswomen nicknamed “the squad” who had not yet backed a Democratic presidential candidate, has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a longtime ally.

He speaks five languages, went to Harvard University and plays the piano, Martha Ludeking, 63, recited, as she watched the presidential candidate take a picture with a fellow Iowan. Lori Lechtenberg, 59, said, “There's just something about him — he's intelligent.” When an audience member asked about conditions in Gaza during a campaign stop in Mason City, Buttigieg began responding in Arabic. The overwhelmingly white audience, largely unaware of what he said, broke into raucous applause.

“He’s a veteran. He’s a Rhodes scholar. He’s everything,” said Bret Van Ausdall, 37. He saw Buttigieg on Sunday at the fourth stop on his bus tour, a 72-hour whirlwind that prioritized small Iowa counties that had drifted from Democrats in recent elections. “The Ph.D. ratio in this town is insane. We’re science-based. We’re logical people. And he speaks to that.”

Throughout the summer months, Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, surpassed expectations in fundraising and national polling, but his success was still dismissed as a temporary blip. He was seen as a flavor of the month in a historically large Democratic field who would eventually be eclipsed by more traditionally qualified candidates — senators, governors, a former vice president.

This weekend, however, Buttigieg made clear that what was once an upstart campaign could grow into a juggernaut in the all-important Iowa caucuses, just three months away.

Buttigieg’s critics say he is offering voters feel-good platitudes without a proven track record of electoral success. But his supporters say his vision, and his identity as an openly gay candidate, make him an inherently transformative figure.

He has successfully built a sustainable ground game throughout the state, generating buzz among voters and turning out crowds of several hundred people in towns of just a few thousand. For growing numbers of likely caucusgoers, he is emerging as the moderate front-runner in the race, ahead of even former Vice President Joe Biden. And he is clearly worrying some of his top rivals in the state, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has recently started taking implicit shots at Buttigieg by needling candidates who have teams of consultants and centrist ideas.

National polls still have Buttigieg firmly behind Biden, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and questions remain over Buttigieg’s ability to cobble together a coalition diverse enough to win the Democratic primary. But the goal of the bus tour, timed to take place after the same Iowa dinner that famously helped create Barack Obama’s presidential mojo in 2007, was to project Buttigieg as the closest analogue to Obama currently in the race.

“The idea of hope may have gone out of style a little bit, but when I look at you, I see it is not out of style,” Buttigieg said in Des Moines. “Are you ready to leave no question about who has the momentum of Iowa right now?”

He has shot up in the polls in Iowa recently and had a one-point edge over Biden in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Iowa voters, within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points. Warren held a slight lead in the poll, while Sanders came in second, just ahead of Buttigieg and Biden.

On Friday, Buttigieg’s supporters filled a quarter of Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines at the Iowa Democratic Party’s annual Liberty and Justice Dinner — a show of organizing force greater than any other candidate’s. He held a rally for thousands near the arena before the dinner.

In an open press setting, Buttigieg can flaunt the same political athleticism that is attracting voters in Iowa and was a trademark of Obama’s, fielding rapid-fire questions from reporters that touch on everything from his previous work in management consulting to his current reading list.

To distinguish himself from his rivals, and Warren’s promises of fighting for “big, structural change” in particular, Buttigieg has taken up an increasingly Obama-esque message of unity and civility.

He asks voters to call relatives with different political beliefs, and to talk about things other than politics. He told voters in a county that flipped from supporting Obama to Donald Trump that political preferences did not define their morality, and he said he welcomed “Republicans of conscience” to join his campaign.

“I just don’t think there’s good and bad people,” Buttigieg said later, speaking on the bus. “When you vote for this president, particularly when you vote for him a second time, you are at best tolerating bad things and at worst having very bad things drawn out of you. But I don’t think that’s the same as thinking the world is divided into people who are good and people who are bad.”

With this message, and the organization he has now built in Iowa, Buttigieg is becoming an interesting test case for the post-Obama Democratic Party. Warren and Sanders pitch a sharp break from the past, and a willingness to ideologically upend the establishment in ways the party has historically resisted. Biden seeks to offer a steady hand in chaotic political times. But Buttigieg uniquely plays to the one thing the Democratic electorate has always enjoyed: falling in love with a new political face promising national unity and compromise.

But swapping out the identities and résumés of the two men — not a black, straight senator from Illinois but a gay, white mayor from Indiana — can change the electoral prospects. For Obama, who was already well-liked in black communities, the path to the Democratic nomination was unlocked in Iowa, helping him centralize black support in South Carolina and in the southern Democratic electorate en route to the nomination. Black support has been the biggest question mark surrounding Buttigieg’s rise.

A recent Monmouth University poll of likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, the early-voting state where the black electorate makes up more than 60% of the Democratic vote, found Mr. Buttigieg at 3% overall, with just 1% support from black respondents. Previous polls have found him at an anemic 0% among black voters.

Even more, high-profile missteps and an initial campaign strategy that relied on heavy exposure to white media and donors helped create a reputation that Buttigieg’s campaign had a blind spot for black community politics. In these communities, where government distrust has been earned over years of disenfranchisement, elite signals such as a Harvard education and a Rhodes scholarship matter less than building relationships with key gatekeepers and validators.

Over the weekend, Julián Castro, the former housing secretary and one of Buttigieg’s 2020 rivals, criticized his “track record” with black voters. On Monday, Buttigieg’s senior communications adviser, Lis Smith, forcefully accused Buttigieg's critics of being biased themselves.

A police killing in South Bend exposed racial tension in Buttigieg’s hometown, and black residents have complained of persistent racial inequality during his tenure as mayor. Buttigieg’s campaign backtracked last month after scheduling a fundraiser with a lawyer in Chicago who had tried to block the release of footage of the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, by a white police officer.

When Buttigieg met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington this summer, he flunked a key test among the senior group of lawmakers. When at least three representatives asked why he did not have black supporters from South Bend validating him on the trail, Buttigieg told them he did not know such signaling was important.

“It was pandering and disingenuous,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, who has since endorsed Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

In the months since, as Buttigieg has professionalized his once bare-bones operation, he has focused on adding staff that can help him better navigate the black political class.

Brandon Neal, a senior adviser who once worked at the NAACP, has helped broker discussions between Buttigieg and elder civil rights statesmen like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Harry Belafonte. Beltway operatives like Donna Brazile and Leah Daughtry, both influential figures at the Democratic National Committee, have been conduits who have helped him grow his relationships with the black political class in Washington.

There have been some signs of progress. Buttigieg was well-received at the recent Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner, where he sat at the table of a fellow Midwestern legislator, Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois. Lamell McMorris, a longtime black political consultant with experience at civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will soon join the campaign as a surrogate.

Buttigieg has repeatedly said he believes that as black Democratic voters get to know him, he will win their support.

“I think the way to win black voters, or any voters, is to deserve to win,” Buttigieg said in Iowa multiple times.

Still, even some Iowa supporters wondered if he was developing a reputation as a candidate for white elites. One white audience member in Mason City asked Buttigieg what his plan was for winning over black voters, because that would determine his post-Iowa electoral prospects. Another, in Decorah, said his reliance on money from big donors, who skew overwhelmingly white, was pushing her toward candidates such as Warren and Sanders, who had sworn off such funds.

“Pete screwed up on that one,” said Janet Alexander, 73. “Because that stuff is important. It shows who you’re listening to.”

On the bus tour, Buttigieg sidestepped a question about why largely white states such as Iowa and New Hampshire get to caucus and vote first.

He smiled and pivoted, saying the four early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — give a good distribution of the Democratic electorate.

Buttigieg left out another truth: The whitest ones are, to this point, making his candidacy tick.

Pete Buttigieg Is an Iowa Front-Runner. Will That Help Him Anywhere Else?

DECORAH, Iowa — Ask almost any Iowa Democrat, and they’ll tell you: Pete Buttigieg is smart.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California led the charge and was set to boycott the event altogether until the group that had invited Trump was removed as a sponsor. Other candidates, such as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, said the president had a history of racist demagoguery that outweighed any recent efforts at criminal justice reform, including the First Step Act that he signed into law last year.

The First Step Act helped thousands of federal inmates secure early release under new sentencing guidelines, but Democrats were united in framing it as an insufficient measure. They called for more structural reforms to the criminal justice system, and took aim at Trump himself, who has made exploitation of racial grievance a trademark of his political brand.

“I find it hypocritical of him to tout whatever advances have been made in the First Step Act given his history,” Harris said. “The hypocrisy is deafening.”

In the Democratic primary, black voters play a key role in determining the party’s nominee, and South Carolina specifically will play a key role in choosing the next Democratic standard-bearer. The state votes fourth in the nomination process and has a Democratic electorate that has more than 60% black voters. With that in mind, candidates — white and black — have made appealing to black voters a key part of their 2020 pitches.

This includes introducing proposals about criminal justice reform, but also infusing more traditional “kitchen table” issues with a view of racial equity.

“It’s not going to take Kim Kardashian coming to the White House to expunge people’s records,” said Booker, referencing Trump’s close relationship with the reality television mogul who has taken up criminal justice reform in recent years.

Buttigieg said the president had inflamed racism and that it must be rooted out from the country’s core. Buttigieg has soared to the top tier of the Democratic field, but has struggled to shake a reputation that his campaign has neglected outreach to black voters.

On Saturday morning, he announced a new criminal justice plan to debut at the forum that called for reducing the incarcerated population nationwide by 50% and diversifying the judiciary, among other goals.

“I believe that if we do not destroy white supremacy in our lifetime, it could well destroy the American project in our lifetime,” Buttigieg said in a speech.

Saturday marked the second day of the three-day event, billed as the “Second Step Presidential Justice Forum.” Trump opened the session with keynote remarks Friday, and leading Democratic presidential candidates will speak later Saturday and Sunday, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The day began with a blast from Trump, who attacked Harris for announcing she would skip the panel in protest of him receiving an award from the event’s organizers. In a tweet, Trump called her a “badly failing presidential candidate” and added that the First Step Act and what he described as “the best unemployment numbers EVER” were “more than Kamala will EVER be able to do for African Americans!”

Harris responded with a tweet of her own, saying, “My whole life I’ve fought for justice and for the people — something you’d know nothing about.”

Harris and Booker both criticized the group that had organized the three-day event, a coalition of black Democrats and Republicans called the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center. The group on Friday gave Trump a criminal justice award and the opportunity to speak in front of a hand-picked audience at Benedict College that largely excluded students.

“Once I heard that Trump received an award at the Second Step Presidential Justice Forum and stopped HBCU students from attending, I decided to do my own criminal justice reform event tomorrow instead,” said Harris, who kicked off the backlash. “I won’t be complicit in papering over his record.”

Harris later announced she would rejoin the forum, after the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center had been removed as an event sponsor. Booker criticized the group for inviting Trump and presenting him with the award.

“Donald Trump was given a platform unchecked for close to an hour,” Booker said. “The Bipartisan Justice Center allowed him to create some illusion of support from this community when, in fact, he excluded it.”

Democratic Candidates Rebuke Trump at Criminal Justice Forum

COLUMBIA, S.C. — One day after President Donald Trump claimed he had done more for black voters than the Obama administration had, several Democratic presidential candidates spoke at the same historically black college Saturday and issued a blistering rebuke of both the president and the event’s organizers — whom they accused of giving Trump an undeserved platform.

“You fought to fix a broken system,” Trump said after listing people involved in the effort. “You sought to confront inequality and stop injustice, and you worked to restore hope and optimism where they’re really needed the most and where there was very little.”

Trump and his allies billed the speech, at Benedict College in Columbia, as a chance for the president to step outside the friendly confines of his supporter base and pitch his administration’s record on criminal justice reform and black employment directly to a black audience.

But only about 10 students from Benedict were given tickets to the invitation-only event, which had room for about 300 attendees, said Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin of Columbia. More than half of the seats were reserved for guests and allies of the administration, organizers said.

The ticket distribution was first reported by McClatchy DC.

Trump’s speech opened a three-day event at the college, billed as the “Second Step Presidential Justice Forum.” Leading Democratic presidential candidates will attend the forum Saturday and Sunday to pitch their criminal justice plans, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The forum’s name is a reference to the bipartisan First Step Act, which Trump signed in December. That law has helped thousands of federal inmates secure early release under new sentencing guidelines and has been a key part of the White House’s pitch for black support.

Overhauling the criminal justice system has, in recent years, been one of the rare areas of bipartisan agreement in an increasingly polarized Congress, and that consensus has spilled into the presidential race. Democrats making the progressive argument for reform have cited the system’s disproportionate impact on black, Latino and Native American communities.

Conservatives, while avoiding portraying the system as inherently prejudiced, have often focused on the financial burden mass incarceration places on governments.

In the Democratic primary, black voters play a critical role in selecting the party’s nominee, especially in South Carolina, an early-voting primary state where they make up more than half the party’s electorate. But even the slightest downturn in black turnout in a general election can be fatal for a Democratic presidential candidate, and Trump and his allies have expressed some hope that they can peel off enough support from black voters — or keep them home altogether — to make an impact in battleground states in 2020.

In 2016, a decrease in black turnout in cities such as Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia helped Trump win key swing states by razor-thin margins, propelling him to an Electoral College victory.

The Trump administration has sought to support historically black colleges and universities, increasing federal support by 14.3%. And Trump spoke to black educators last month at the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week conference.

But Trump has also made attacks on lawmakers of color central to his reelection strategy. This summer, for example, he lashed out at Rep. Elijah E. Cummings on Twitter, referring to Cummings’ majority-black district in Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

Cummings, who died last week, on Thursday became the first African American elected official to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol.

About an hour before Trump’s appearance, more than 100 anti-Trump protesters gathered near the campus. The protest included few Benedict students; it mostly comprised local residents and staff members of the state Democratic Party and some of the Democratic presidential campaigns, who were preparing for their candidates to arrive Saturday.

Tim Bupp, a 62-year-old South Carolina pastor, held a sign that showed a lynched black person hanging from a tree. It was a reference to Trump’s tweet this week comparing the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into him a lynching.

“The fact that he compares the inquiry to a lynching and then has the audacity to come to a black college? Insane,” said Bupp, who is white. “He doesn’t even apologize. He just doubles down.”

Michelle Thomas, 42, who is black and lives in Columbia, said Trump’s lynching remark motivated her to protest. “That was the final straw for me,” she said.

She said she was also upset that Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of her state’s two Republican senators, had defended Trump’s remarks. “Trump’s actions got Trump in this situation,” she said. “No one else.”

Leaders of historically black colleges and universities, often referred to as HBCUs, have long enjoyed close relationships with both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, even as their institutions face increasingly dire financial straits. Born of a time of segregation when black Americans were forced to educate themselves, the schools have produced black leaders for more than a century, including politicians such as Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Cummings, who both attended Howard University.

In 2017, when several presidents of black colleges met with Trump in the Oval Office, many faced backlash from their student bodies. At Howard, founded 150 years ago in Washington, campus buildings were tagged with graffiti that denounced the school’s president and said “Make Howard black again.”

Campus leaders defended themselves by pointing to their pocketbooks, and the need to secure federal funds to maintain viability.

“You need to get to the president to impact his budget if you hope to get your financial support from Congress,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents 47 black colleges and universities that receive public funding.

At Trump's Speech at a Black College, His Allies Far Outnumber Students

COLUMBIA, S.C. — President Donald Trump, in a speech at a historically black college here Friday, said the bipartisan criminal justice overhaul he signed into law last year could lead to further reform of the system.

Gone is the hubris from the start of her candidacy, when some top advisers asserted privately that the early 2020 nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire were not crucial — a decision that baffled rival campaigns and even some Harris staff members on the ground who had suggested more early investment.

Now Harris is staking her campaign on a top-three finish in Iowa, and her own words point to a candidate trying to reset expectations: shedding the label of a once-feared top candidate (she has fallen to fifth place in national polling) and reasserting herself as a punchy upstart.

“I stand here as a United States senator, a former attorney general of a state of 40 million people and a top-tier candidate for president of the United States!” she told striking autoworkers this past week outside a General Motors plant in Reno, Nevada.

After support for Harris surged after her performance in the first Democratic debate in June, her downward trajectory the past three months has gained notice. Her third-quarter fundraising was flat, undergirded by a heavy schedule of high-dollar events that kept her away from the trail. She now polls closer to lesser known candidates like technology entrepreneur Andrew Yang than to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Some challenges were thrust upon her: heightened expectations after a better-than-expected start; the burden of a historic candidacy that has no touchstone; and the rise of Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who has become a favorite of the donor circuit that once preferred Harris. At a recent dinner for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the reception for Warren dwarfed the one for Harris, igniting chatter across the community that Harris considers a home base.

Other blips were self-inflicted. Most notably, Harris entered the race as a sponsor of Sanders’ plan for single-payer health insurance, only to later denounce it and offer her own.

No Democrat questions her competence or political skill. She rattled Biden in the first debate, won plaudits for her tough questioning of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members during Senate hearings and earned high favorability ratings from primary voters that could indicate room for growth.

But she has had trouble stringing together individual moments and converting them into sustained support, and interviews with voters at a series of campaign events in Nevada revealed that even some who planned to vote for her were yearning to see a clearer, more consistent expression of her political vision.

“I feel like, a couple times, she came out as a fighter and was aggressive — and then she backs off,” said Traci Decker, 42, who attended the Las Vegas event. “I want to see her keep pushing.”

Sofia Takhtadjian, 18, said she thought that each time she had seen Harris on the Democratic debate stage, her message had been different.

“I’ve heard rebuttals, and single opinions, but I think she needs her own personal image,” Takhtadjian said. “She needs to show her own beliefs.”

What’s left is a schism between those who think Harris’ summer struggles were a temporary dip caused by her relative absence on the trail, and those who believe something more fundamental is at play — that her catchall ideology is a mismatch for a political moment defined by clear progressives like Warren and Sanders and moderates like Biden.

At campaign events this past week, Harris debuted a fresh stump speech focused on the impeachment inquiry into Trump, an issue in which her campaign believes she is uniquely suited to lead as a former prosecutor.

She began each of the rallies, titled “Dude Gotta Go,” with a lengthy discussion of the president’s suspected crimes, and concluded by talking directly about the idea of “electability,” which she described as the “elephant” in the 2020 race, and the fear that the country was not ready to elect a black woman as president.

“Let’s have some real talk,” Harris said in Reno. “This is not a new conversation for me. This is a conversation that I’ve heard every time I’ve ran a campaign and — here’s the operative word — won.”

In strategic terms, her campaign’s choice to pivot to Iowa is a concession that its initial theory of the presidential race was at least partly incorrect. From the start, her longtime advisers mapped out a national strategy that highlighted primaries with more diverse electorates — such as South Carolina, Nevada and California, her home state — while conserving resources often used in early states for television advertisements in later ones.

It was a risky bet made with California confidence, one that would not only boost a candidate with the potential to make history but also do so without prioritizing Iowa and New Hampshire, a strategy that is unproven on the national stage and a break from Barack Obama’s successful playbook in 2008.

But after the fleeting high of Harris’ much-talked-about exchange with Biden over segregation and school busing in the first Democratic debate, it became clear that several assumptions underpinning that national strategy were not in line with the moment.

Biden’s support soon bounced back, fueled by perceptions that he was best suited to defeat Trump, which remains the top priority for most Democratic voters. Biden’s strength with black voters has been particularly difficult for Harris to match, and some of her own supporters in the Congressional Black Caucus told her privately they thought the debate moment had crossed a line.

Warren and Sanders have also dictated the policy terms of the primary and the debates, pulling Harris between the dueling worlds of progressives advocating structural change and Biden’s yesteryear centrism. She prefers neither.

“I am not a socialist. I believe in the virtues of capitalism if capitalism is actually working,” Harris said in Reno. “But most people are not starting out on the same footing. And over the last couple of decades, the rules have been written in a way that have not been in support of working people and working families.”

A turning point came in early August during a five-day bus tour throughout Iowa — the longest period of retail campaigning Harris had spent in the state to date.

Her poll numbers were descending and the afterglow of the first debate had faded, but the candidate found refuge in what she thought was a warm reception by state Democrats who had felt neglected by her campaign.

She returned to her team with an edict, calling senior staff together and requesting a memo with a singular focus: doubling down in Iowa — in resources and in time.

Lily Adams, Harris’ communications director, said the state was a “proven path that our campaign recognized early on.”

“In 2004 and 2008, the eventual Democratic nominees used Iowa to come from behind and slingshot into the other early states and Super Tuesday,” Adams said. “We’ll put in the resources and time to compete there and be successful.”

The change in electoral strategy also coincided with a staff reorganization, including a campaign role for Harris’ Senate chief of staff, Rohini Kosoglu. The campaign denied reports that the changes indicated discontent with the structure of Harris’ current senior staff.

However, people inside the campaign said that the overlapping roles of Harris’ political consultants from California; springtime hires such as Jim Margolis, the Democratic advertising guru who has worked with the party’s last three presidential nominees; and Maya Harris, the senator’s sister, campaign chair and close confidante, have at times contributed to organizational confusion.

Kamala Harris’ supporters online and in early voting states have come up with their own reasoning for her recent downturn: a biased news media that is favoring white candidates such as Warren and Buttigieg.

Lance Pringle, president of United Auto Workers Local 2162 in Reno, said even if Harris had stumbled, it had been amplified by a news media that treats women of color more harshly.

“I notice it, definitely,” Pringle said. “Warren came out of nowhere, and Kamala was on top at the beginning. Like I said, skin color matters — whether we like it or not.”

Allen Warner, 41, said he believed impeachment would help springboard Harris’ candidacy.

“Other candidates may have clearer plans, but I just feel like we’re fighting for our democracy,” Warner said, “and she’s the one who I connect with and who resonates leadership.”

For all the technical changes the campaign is making, which also include holding more intimate events in Iowa rather than large rallies, there remains the question of message. Harris has at times embraced large-scale solutions such as a mandatory gun buyback program and ending the Senate filibuster to pass the Green New Deal. But she has rarely advocated for them consistently or with conviction, frustrating the progressive activists such policies are meant to please.

She frequently cites the unfairness of funding public schools through property taxes — an issue she raised again at her event in Reno — but she has offered no solution. In September, she hinted at a plan for mass student debt forgiveness, but a full proposal is still being developed.

Such oscillation is why Heather Renner, a 19-year-old college student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, came to see Harris. She loved the idea of a woman being elected president, and she liked Harris personally, but she said she did not have a good idea of what her policy core was, including what she believed about student debt cancellation.

As the event ended, Renner said she felt no closer to an answer, though the personal affection persisted.

“Everyone else has that one thing. What’s her one thing?” Renner asked. “It’s like nailing Jell-O to a wall. I can’t place it.”

Harris, Seeking Boost, Overhauls Her Strategy

LAS VEGAS — Sen. Kamala Harris of California kicked off perhaps the most important month of her stalled presidential bid in the shadow of America’s casino capital, a fitting start to an October in which she and her campaign staff will put their chips on the table.

Harris’ third-quarter number is far below what some other candidates reported this week: Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, raised $19.1 million; Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced an eye-popping $25.3 million haul, the largest of any candidate this cycle. Two other top-tier candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Vice President Joe Biden, have yet to release their third-quarter totals.

Harris’ total for the second quarter of the year was $11.8 million, helped by a strong online donation push in the final days. This quarter, which included a summer largely spent at a slew of closed-door events and away from the campaign trail, Harris has seen her financial standing hold steady even as her political prospects fell. Polling now has her increasingly falling behind the race’s top-tier candidates.

The announcement comes as the Harris campaign embarks on its new all-in strategy in Iowa, with an explicit focus on finishing in the top three in February’s caucus there. Though Harris’ fundraising numbers have trickled downward each quarter, the campaign recently hired more than 60 political organizers for Iowa and is largely expected to remain a key player in the Iowa and South Carolina primaries, through the strength of her early state organizing.

A campaign spokesman said about half of her total funds, $6.5 million, was from her digital fundraising operation, which indicates small dollar donations.

“As we have spent the summer months strengthening our infrastructure, we enter this final stretch of 2019 with ample resources to execute a winning game plan,” said Juan Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager.

The Harris campaign did not disclose the total amount of donors the money comes from. The campaign said its average donation was $34, lower than the $39 average they reported in the previous fundraising quarter. Campaigns often point to small average donations as evidence that they are attracting a large pool of grassroots supporters.

In its announcement, the campaign said it had nearly $10 million cash on hand.

Harris’ total is above more lower-tier candidates. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, for instance, raised $6 million, his campaign said this week.

“This is a campaign that is growing, expanding and built to win this primary,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “We are ready to harness the energy of our thousands of grassroots volunteers to phone bank, knock doors and turn out the vote for Kamala in these 2020 contests.”

In this race’s early stages, Harris showed all the signs of a possible coalition candidate, merging liberals and more moderate minority voters behind the strength of her historic bid to become the country’s first woman of color elected president. On the race’s first day, she raised $1.5 million, and she soon held a kickoff rally in Oakland, California, that remains one of the largest events for any candidate, with more than 20,000 people in attendance.

However, as the race has matured, Harris has been outflanked in money and ideology. Buttigieg has become the favorite of big money donors, and advisers for Biden, the race’s most prominent moderate candidate, are now considering a super PAC to supplement his coffers.

On the grassroots side, progressives have centralized behind their two preferred candidates: Sanders, who retains many supporters from his previous presidential run, and Warren, who has grown her fundraising base as her poll numbers have risen. She has outpaced Biden and Sanders in recent polls, both nationally and in a few early-voting states.

Harris’ team is adamant that she remains well-positioned — and adequately funded — to mount a vigorous operation in Iowa. As Biden’s poll numbers fade, Harris’ advisers believe her campaign is likely to gain from this and can use a strong initial showing to centralize black voters in later states. Recently, Harris shook up her senior staff, in a move that was first reported by Politico and was taken as an acknowledgment of the campaign’s tough road ahead.

Ian Sams, Harris’ national press secretary, said Harris had her best fundraising day of the quarter Monday. That day, she called on President Donald Trump’s Twitter account to be suspended during an interview with CNN.

Kamala Harris Raises $11.6 Million in Third Quarter, Lagging Top Rivals

Sen. Kamala Harris of California has raised $11.6 million in the past three months, her campaign said Tuesday, a total that almost identically matches her fundraising totals from previous quarters, when she also raised around $12 million.

The party endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the last presidential cycle, at which time he described Working Families as “the closest thing” to “my vision of democratic socialism.” The group’s endorsement of Warren on Monday, one of the few by a prominent progressive organization this early in the primary, could turn heads among left-leaning Democrats desperate to defeat Biden, the more moderate front-runner, in a primary election where their party’s ideological future is at stake.

“Sen. Warren knows how to kick Wall Street kleptocrats where it hurts, and she’s got some truly visionary plans to make this country work for the many,” said Maurice Mitchell, the Working Families Party’s national director. “We need a mass movement to make her plans a reality, and we’re going to be a part of that work.”

Mitchell brushed off the possibility that the group’s endorsement would be seen as a sign of a splintering of the progressive left. The vote among “tens of thousands” of party members and national committee leaders resulted in a commanding majority for Warren, a party spokesman said; she received more than 60% of the votes on the first ballot.

But the announcement was met with derision from some of Sanders’ supporters. The national committee leaders — 56 people — held 50% of the voting power, with party members accounting for the other 50%. Several Sanders supporters called for the Working Families Party to release the full vote totals, which it has declined to do.

Sanders’ campaign shook up its New Hampshire staff over the weekend as Warren continued to make inroads among progressives. Warren is coming off a debate performance last week that was generally well received, and she held a rally in New York on Monday that drew thousands to Washington Square Park.

Also on Monday, Warren unveiled a plan to combat corruption in government, a core theme of her campaign. The plan is based on a wide-ranging anti-corruption bill that she first proposed last year and is a cornerstone of her stump speech on the campaign trail.

Mitchell and other Working Families Party leaders said in interviews that their endorsement came with a message to other progressive organizations. Rather than passively observe the primary, they said, these groups should choose a side and flex their organizing muscle during the early stages to help knock Biden off his perch.

“If our focus is on victory, we can’t be delusional about it,” Mitchell said. “You don’t defeat the moderate wing of Democrats through thought pieces or pithy tweets, you defeat their politics through organizing.”

Traditional bellwether endorsements from labor unions like American Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union have not yet materialized, though Sanders picked up an endorsement from the United Electrical workers in August. With less than five months to go before the Iowa caucuses formally begin the nominating contest, many organizations are still wrestling with a sprawling Democratic field.

“There are some great arguments for progressives rallying around a single candidate as soon as possible and others for taking the time to see how the contest develops,” said Yvette Simpson, chief executive of Democracy for America, another progressive group that endorsed Sanders four years ago. Simpson said her group did not plan to endorse a candidate before December.

Sanders finished second in the Working Families Party vote, ahead of three other candidates: former housing secretary Julián Castro, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York.

Most national polls show a top tier of three candidates in the Democratic primary — Biden, Warren and Sanders — and Biden has remained the front-runner.

Among the two leading progressive candidates, Sanders has traditionally enjoyed more support from working-class voters, helped by his name recognition held over from 2016. Warren has made significant gains in the past six months, but polling shows that most of that growth has come from college-educated voters.

In the years since President Donald Trump’s election, candidates backed by the Working Families Party have won congressional, state and local races across the country, expanding the group’s power base from the Acela corridor in the East to the West Coast. The group also helped several left-wing candidates win seats in the New York state Legislature last year.

Mitchell took over as national director for the party in 2018, after he rose in prominence during the Black Lives Matter movement born out of protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

The group’s leaders stressed that, even with their endorsement, their intention was not to divide the progressive left between Warren and Sanders. The senators are longtime friends and have been publicly supportive of each other’s candidacies.

But they are still locked in a battle to be the progressive standard-bearer. After the Working Families endorsement was announced on Monday, Misty Rebik, Sanders’ Iowa state director, wrote on Twitter: “There is one movement politics presidential candidate. One. It’s @BernieSanders.”

Outside the left wing of the party, more moderate Democrats have continued to sound alarms about progressives’ ability to beat Trump, and about Warren’s chances in particular. And many Republicans see the progressives’ embrace of a “Medicare for All” health care system and the Green New Deal as general-election liabilities waiting to be exploited.

Surrogates for other Democratic contenders — like Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — have tried to paint Warren and Sanders as candidates of the elite, who talk about lofty ideologies instead of pragmatic solutions.

“My concern about the vision from the Sanders-Warren approach is that it can polarize Americans, when we have other ways to deliver bold solutions without dividing the American people further,” Buttigieg said Sunday on CNN.

But Mitchell said he believed the Working Families Party could convert Democrats skeptical of wide-reaching progressive policies.

“I’m not worried about converting people who are already committed to a structural change agenda,” Mitchell said. “I’m worried about the people who are still trying to figure out where they land.”

Working Families Party, a Major Progressive Force, Endorses Warren

The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned progressive group whose electoral influence has grown since the 2016 election, has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for the Democratic presidential nomination, a boon to her candidacy as she attempts to position herself as the main challenger to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Sanders’ campaign shook up its New Hampshire staff over the weekend as Warren continued to make inroads among progressives. Warren is coming off a debate performance last week that was generally well received, and she is preparing for a rally in New York on Monday that could be among the largest gatherings for any candidate this year.

Working Families Party Endorses Warren

The downside: Even with those head-turning moments, she is currently polling closer to the bottom rung of Democratic candidates than she is to the top tier in national surveys.

Harris’ summer dip places additional pressure on her performance at the third Democratic debate in Houston, as surrogates, donors and even some supporters are looking for her to recapture the magic that initially won them over.

Many of her campaign advisers contend there is no cause for panic at the moment, pointing to the calendar — and the 4 1/2 months between Thursday and the Iowa caucuses. Others push back on the idea that the primary has become a three-person race between Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Jess Morales Rocketto, the political director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said that, in her view, Harris represents what the party really wants to be and the debate is a crucial moment for the senator to make that clear.

“Voters and operatives, they want to make her their candidate,” she said. “They haven’t yet because she needs to show some more work to make that happen.”

Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat who has endorsed Harris, said she feels confident about her current position. Fudge expects the California senator to go on the attack in this debate because “the timing is right,” she said.

“This debate matters in particular because people don’t start paying attention until after Labor Day,” Fudge said. “Now every day people are starting to pay attention, so this is an important one.”

In the past week, both the promise and pitfalls of Harris’ campaign were on display, a microcosm of a campaign that has been defined by both high points and inconsistency. On Monday, she issued a sweeping criminal justice plan, which won her plaudits from progressive activists who had been critical of her reform record in California. But the release was somewhat muddled, as Harris had to spend the weekend apologizing for a video from an event where she seemed to laugh with an audience member who referred to the president using a mental health slur.

For some, Harris’ up-and-down summer is simply a byproduct of her own success, after an impressive debut and early fundraising numbers created artificially high expectations she was never going to immediately meet. However, despite Harris being in the Senate since 2017, her advisers point out that she came into the race without a firm national presence and is the highest-polling Democrat from that position.

“People want to know what makes you tick,” Fudge said, relaying what she has personally told Harris. “They want to know what your values are, where you come from. That’s the huge issue.”

Ian Sams, Harris’ spokesman, said in a statement that Democrats should expect Harris to “take on Donald Trump directly” in the debate, and “make the connection between his hatred and division and our inability to get things done for the country.”

In private discussions and in donor calls, Harris’ team has acknowledged the need to better define her policy message and separate herself from her Democratic rivals. They also, particularly after her success in the first debate, have stressed to Harris that voters respond positively when she leans into her biography as a child of immigrants with a barrier-breaking career.

In an interview last week with The New York Times, Harris appeared unfazed by the fluctuations of the summer or the pressure to have another well-received debate performance.

In recent weeks, the California senator has tried to differentiate her policy message from Democratic rivals — offering her own plans on health care, climate change and criminal justice reform. She has also noticeably eradicated go-to phrases like “we need to have that conversation” from her public vocabulary, after criticism she seemed too cautious.

“Maybe I’ve made it more clear, but I’ve been clear the whole time,” Harris said of her policy vision. “I’ve always thought and talked about what wakes people up in the middle of the night.”

Still, at times, Harris’ attempts to occupy a pragmatic middle ground between progressive firebrands and old-school Democratic moderates can land in awkward ways. In late July, she said “I’m not trying to restructure society,” but in recent weeks she has released a criminal justice plan that would overhaul prisons and police practices, and embraced the possible elimination of the Senate filibuster to pass the Green New Deal.

“I plan on restructuring things in a way that will address those things that wake people up in the middle of the night,” Harris clarified last week. “That’s the consistent through line from the beginning. And frankly, even before I ran, I’ve always thought about it around that kind of metaphor.”

Sanders and Warren often target Wall Street corporations as the root cause of people’s problems, and Biden has singled out Trump as a unique existential threat. When asked what she views as the root cause of societal problems, Harris said leaders do not see and understand the tangible hardships of working families.

“It is not about some textbook stuff. It is not some intellectual stuff. It’s not some ideological stuff,” she said. “It literally is, what is that person experiencing?”

The good news for Sen. Kamala Harris of California is that all the political ingredients are there. Her campaign launch in Oakland remains the largest rally of any Democratic candidate this year, her Senate committee videos go viral and she ignited the most talked-about debate moment to this point, when she confronted the front-runner, Joe Biden, regarding his Senate record on school integration.

Astead W. Herndon

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