Reid J. Epstein

The union, National Nurses United, fervently supported Sanders’ last bid for the White House in 2016, and its members have been significant players in Democratic politics since then, showing up in red T-shirts to support Sanders’ progressive allies in intraparty battles. They have also canvassed neighborhoods in swing congressional districts, urging voters to get behind “Medicare for all,” Sanders’ plan for a nationalized health insurance system.

“We know what we have done and what it takes to bring about fundamental change, and it’s massive organizing and a mass movement,” said Jean Ross, a co-president of the union. “Of all the candidates, Bernie is the one who understands that.”

The union plans to formally endorse Sanders on Friday at a news conference in Oakland, California.

After being so tied to Sanders in 2016, the nurses’ union was unlikely to endorse anyone else in the 2020 race. Sanders, of Vermont, was the only candidate to sit for an in-person interview with the union to seek its endorsement; Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called in on a video chat and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, sent a 3-minute video. Union officials said they had invited former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California to interview but each declined to do so.

Warren, another leading candidate for the nomination and Sanders’ top progressive rival, has also laid out a sweeping plan for single-payer health insurance, but the union stuck with the original architect of Medicare for all.

“We enjoyed the difficulty this time around because last time the field was so barren” aside from Sanders, Ross said.

The endorsement also brings Sanders the support of the union’s super PAC, a thorny issue given that Sanders, like most of the Democrats seeking the party’s 2020 nomination, has disavowed support from super PACs.

In 2016 the union’s super PAC spent $5 million backing Sanders in the primary contest against Hillary Clinton, a relative pittance in the world of super PACs (the one supporting Jeb Bush blew through $87 million). Still, it spent more money backing Sanders than was spent by any other super PAC on behalf of Clinton or other Democrats in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.

The union’s super PAC “will be activated” on behalf of Sanders, said Bonnie Castillo, the union’s executive director. But she said union members and the super PAC would not attack Sanders’ rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“We’re not going negative,” she said. “We are a very positive force. It’s a reflection of who we are as a profession. We are healers.”

When talking to voters, Sanders often rails against the influence of money in politics, vowing to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010 that opened the super PAC era in American politics. Since Biden dropped his resistance last month to receiving the support of such groups, Sanders has become more pointed.

“I don’t need a super PAC,” he said during a town hall-style event last month in Marshalltown, Iowa, in response to a question from the audience about Biden. “I am not going to be controlled by a handful of wealthy people. I will be controlled by the working people of this country.”

This weekend, he continued the theme, saying, “We don’t have a super PAC,” at a rally in Coralville, Iowa.

But Sanders did not disavow support from the nurses’ union’s super PAC in 2016, even as he pointed out that he did not have a super PAC of his own. On Monday, Sanders thanked the nurses’ union for its support but did not address its super PAC.

“What the nurses understand is that the current health care system is not only dysfunctional but extraordinarily cruel,” Sanders said in a statement relayed by his campaign. “Together we are finally going to do what should have been done decades ago and make sure that every man, woman and child in this country has quality health care as a human right.”

Few major labor unions, typically significant players in Democratic Party politics, have endorsed candidates in the 2020 presidential contest. Biden kicked off his campaign in a Teamsters hall with the endorsement of the International Association of Fire Fighters. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America backed Sanders in August. The National Union of Healthcare Workers endorsed both Sanders and Warren in September.

National Nurses United was born out of a 2009 merger of three smaller unions. The organization, with about 155,000 members, is a staunch proponent of liberal politics and movement-building in the Sanders mold. The union’s nurses were active in providing health care to protesters at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan in 2011, and the organization has lobbied forcefully for single-payer health care and a financial transaction tax.

Deborah Burger, a union co-president, said if Sanders did not win the primary the union was committed to fighting for whoever wins the party’s nomination against President Donald Trump.

“We have made a commitment to endorse Bernie Sanders,” she said. “But in the end we have made a commitment to our communities that we live in that we will do whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump.”

This article originally appeared in

Big Nurses Union Backs Bernie Sanders and His Push for 'Medicare for All'

WASHINGTON — The country’s largest nurses’ union will endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for president this week, a significant boost to his campaign from a major ally in the fight for his signature health care proposal.

“I met the president,” he shouted, bounding down the steps two at a time.

His mother gently corrected him: “Not yet,” she said, while the Warren photo line snaked on behind her. Oliver couldn’t be faulted for his civics proficiency; he’s 7 years old.

The 2020 Democratic presidential campaign stops are crawling with children, some of whom spend most of the stump speeches crawling away from their parents. While all of the candidates seek to portray a family-friendly image, it takes work to bring a youngster to a campaign event: They often start late and run well into the evening, with a policy discussion not exactly accessible on the elementary-school level; bigger rallies often take place outdoors, regardless of weather.

Kissing babies and tousling children’s hair have long been a staple of retail campaigning, but in 2020 it is about more than a photo op, even the cutest of photo ops. In a historically crowded field, in an era of uncertain polling, these campaign stops are something of a past-their-bedtimes straw poll, revealing which candidates young parents deem viable or famous enough to risk a tantrum or sleep-deprived meltdown over the next morning.

For now, the leaders appear to be Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden, who have both taken steps to cater to children and parents who come see them. It’s one more subtle measure of their stature in race that is steadily narrowing from the largest primary field in history to just a handful of viable contenders.

Warren and Biden, whose staffs both go to great lengths to present their events as family-friendly, are currently atop the Democratic polls, which might explain the pep talk parents often give their children before meeting the two candidates: You are talking to the next president.

Warren lets families with children cut to the front of her selfie line, a strong incentive given that supporters often wait hours for a 20-second interaction and photograph. Biden’s campaign stops over the summer and fall have often come with free ice cream — and if frozen dairy products are not available, he’s been known to hand out cash with instructions for children to tell their parents to stop for a treat on the way home.

During a Labor Day swing through Iowa, Biden worked a chocolate-and-vanilla swirl machine at one union picnic and handed out ice cream sandwiches at another.

Last month in Iowa City, Clara Engler, 5, spent hours before an evening Warren rally at the University of Iowa practicing the “pinkie promise” that has become a staple for young girls at Warren’s events. With her mother, Brooke Engler, an Iowa City cosmetologist, Clara worked on locking fingers briefly and looking up, so she could hear Warren tell her that running for president is “what girls do.”

When the moment came, about a half-hour after Clara’s bedtime, Warren got down on one knee, looked her in the eye and made the promise. Clara jumped up with glee. Her mother beamed.

“She’d seen it before on TV,” Engler said. “It’s nice that I can have my child sit back and watch politics without worrying about what will be said.”

The others in the 19-candidate Democratic field aren’t overtly inhospitable to children, but former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas peppers his stump speech with profanity and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont isn’t a fuzzy figure while delivering his policy-heavy stemwinders. In early September he scolded a crying baby to “keep it down” during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, whose most fervent supporters tend to be young enough not to have children of their own, often attracts older kids — particularly LGBT teens inspired by the first openly gay major candidate for president.

“When you know that there’s something historic about your campaign, you feel a level of responsibility that goes with that,” Buttigieg said aboard his Iowa campaign bus last month. “It certainly adds a level of motivation when people come up to you, sometimes with tears in their eyes, just letting you know what the fact of your campaign means to them.”

Even in Iowa, where rare is the weekend without a presidential hopeful stumping nearby, it takes a serious commitment and coordination to attend a campaign event with young children.

“If she starts crying we’ll run out quickly,” Elizabeth Batey, a lawyer from Waverly, said of her 2-year-old daughter, Hattie, while waiting for Buttigieg last month in a stuffy storefront in Iowa Falls.

Batey, whose 4-month-old son, George, was asleep in his car seat, made it through Buttigieg’s event without having to flee. Afterward, she waited on the sidewalk in front of the Buttigieg campaign bus, holding one child in each arm.

“Wow, you’ve got your hands full,” Buttigieg told her before pausing for a picture.

Parents interviewed at a range of campaign events said they often felt like this political moment resembled a tawdry reality TV show, and they brought their children to see the 2020 candidates to try to demonstrate to them that politics can be something different.

“I can’t let my kids listen to the TV without being ready to hit the mute button,” said Julia Privett, a physician assistant who brought her 2-year-old daughter, Alyssa, to see Biden talk about climate change in Cedar Rapids.

Lytishya Borglum, a Cedar Falls small business owner, brought her three middle-school-age children to see Sen. Kamala Harris of California speak at the University of Northern Iowa. She’d taken her oldest daughter, 13-year-old Berlyn, to see Democratic caucus campaign events in 2008, but skipped 2016 because it was too toxic.

“Nowadays, it’s impossible for them not to be exposed to the craziness in the White House,” Borglum said.

At Warren’s Iowa City rally, a parade of children waited with their parents for a picture with the senator. Kohner Reynolds, who will turn 2 in November, blew past his 7:30 p.m. bedtime.

“He fell asleep a couple times in the baby carrier,” said Kohner’s mother, Callie Reynolds. “I wanted him to be able to say he came to see her.”

Burgundy Johnson, a child psychologist, kept her 5-month-old son, Archer, up past his 8 p.m. bedtime. She occupied Archer with toys.

“I wanted a picture of Elizabeth Warren holding my baby,” she said while leaving the event at 8:40 p.m. “Now it’s going to be an interesting night.”

Older children tend to be more attuned to issues.

Evelynn Parlet, 11, an Iowa City sixth grader, said she approved of Warren’s campaign goal of reordering the U.S. economy.

“I liked what she said,” she said. “We need to help people who don’t have enough money.”

Samara and Isa Murillo, sisters who are 10 and 8 years old, each had Warren autograph a white campaign placard. Warren got down on one knee and signed them on the floor of the stage.

“We love her ideas about change and the two cents,” Samara said. “People out there are dying of hunger.”

Isa said she was more focused on climate change. “Some people don’t have homes because of the flooding,” she said.

And, because it is Iowa, there are parents who spend caucus season vying to get their children photographed with all of the candidates they can — just in case one of them makes it to the White House.

Eric Heininger, a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations, and his wife, Tiffani Milless, a physician, toted their 9-month-old daughter, Charlotte, around the Polk County Steak Fry last month to get her in pictures with as many contenders as possible. Dressed in a red-white-and-blue sundress, Charlotte met Warren, Buttigieg, O’Rourke and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. At earlier campaign events, she was photographed with Sanders, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who ended his campaign in August.

With Charlotte sleeping on her father’s chest, Milless filled out a card committing to caucus for O’Rourke and held it up while the Texan offered his toothy smile.

“Thank you so much,” O’Rourke said, gently patting the sleeping child on her back. A campaign aide took Milless’ caucus card and stuffed it into a backpack.

Afterward, Milless said she had only filled out the card in order to secure the picture with her daughter.

“He’s in my top three,” she said. “It’s a loose commitment, kind of like a promise ring.”

The Democrats Worth Staying Up Past Bedtime For

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Oliver Hanlon was beaming ear to ear as he stood next to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on a riverside stage at the University of Iowa.

Buttigieg’s total for the third fundraising quarter, which ended Monday, was $5.8 million less than the 2020 Democratic field-leading $24.9 million he raised during the previous fundraising period from April to June.

“This is great news and shows that in a crowded field, Pete continues to stand out as having the vision and leadership voters know we need to tackle the urgent problems facing our country,” Buttigieg’s campaign manager, Mike Schmuhl, wrote in a Tuesday morning email announcing the total. “It also positions us solidly as one of the top three fundraisers in this race.”

But poll results indicate that Buttigieg’s fundraising haul has not so far elevated him into the first tier of the campaign’s 19-candidate field. The latest polls of Iowa and New Hampshire show the 37-year-old mayor well behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Vice President Joe Biden, and slightly behind Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Political fundraising is traditionally harder during July and August as the attention of big donors shifts to their summer vacations. Aides to Buttigieg said he scaled back his fundraising schedule during August and September to hold more public events in Iowa, where last week he took reporters on a three-day bus tour.

“Summer’s a little softer than spring for sure,” Buttigieg said Saturday after a campaign stop in Sparks, Nevada. “But we like where we are. And the bottom line is, we have the resources to go the distance. And I think that’ll be one of the biggest things separating the campaigns.”

Schmuhl’s memo said more than 580,000 individual donors had contributed to the Buttigieg campaign since it launched in January, placing him well above likely thresholds to compete in future presidential debates. It said the campaign had raised more than $51 million since the beginning of the race. The memo did not reveal how much cash Buttigieg had remaining at the end of the third quarter.

Minutes after Buttigieg’s campaign released his total, Sanders said he had raised $25.3 million for the quarter.

Buttigieg has maintained an aggressive fundraising schedule. His husband, Chasten Buttigieg, is a fundraising headliner himself, and Pete Buttigieg’s senior aide, Lis Smith, hosted a “drinks and conversation” event in Washington two weeks ago.

Buttigieg’s focus on high-dollar fundraising events — he held at least 12 in September, according to schedules reviewed by The New York Times — has left him vulnerable to being tagged as the candidate of the donor class, a wealthy, almost entirely white demographic that is hardly representative of his party’s diverse electorate. And indeed, Buttigieg’s support is strongest among educated white voters; he is weakest among black and Hispanic voters.

On his bus tour of Iowa last week, Buttigieg said he was spending his fundraising haul to hire staff — he has nearly 400 — and open the 42 campaign offices he now has across the first four nominating states.

“As long as we have a campaign finance reality like the one we live in, we’re going to continue to be uncomfortable and rightfully so,” Buttigieg said. “But we’ve also had a big grassroots focus in our fundraising from online to in-person.”

Buttigieg is among the first candidates to reveal third quarter fundraising totals, which must be reported to the Federal Election Commission by Oct. 15.

Buttigieg's Third Quarter Fundraising Total Is $19.1 Million

WASHINGTON — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, raised $19.1 million for his presidential campaign during the last three months, his campaign said Tuesday. The figure represents a decrease in his fundraising pace from earlier in the summer.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign said it would have 110 staffers in the state by the end of this month. Sen. Kamala Harris has promised to visit every week in October. Mayor Pete Buttigieg on Sunday kicked off a John McCain-like everything-on-the-record bus tour and is advertising on local television and radio. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is 49 counties into her tour of all 99 in the state. And on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders will begin a “Bernie Beats Trump” tour of eastern Iowa to highlight what he says is his strength as a general election candidate.

As a new poll suggested a significant shift in the primary race’s top tier — with Sen. Elizabeth Warren overtaking Biden for first place — candidates at the annual Polk County Steak Fry in Des Moines on Saturday tried to cut through the furor surrounding President Donald Trump, Ukraine and Biden to deliver their message to voters still sifting through their preferences from one of the largest fields in history.

The candidates’ renewed sense of urgency has set the stage for a four-month sprint to a night of caucuses that remains the single biggest prize in American politics.

“We know that Iowa is where we can turn heads,” Buttigieg, of South Bend, Indiana, said aboard his campaign bus Sunday. “Even the other early states will be looking at what Iowa did.”

The increasing focus on Iowa, where voters must attend an hourslong midwinter evening gathering to participate in choosing their party’s nominee, has come at the expense of New Hampshire, where the nation’s first primary comes eight days later.

No Democratic presidential candidate is betting his or her entire campaign on a strong performance in New Hampshire, meaning it may be the first time since 1984 that there is not a candidate focused solely on the Granite State in a contested presidential race.

With so many people running, much remains unsettled. And both Iowa and New Hampshire have a history of lifting underdog candidates, with John Kerry rising from the single digits to a caucus victory in 2004 and Bill Clinton declaring himself the “comeback kid” when he finished second in New Hampshire’s 1992 primary.

Yet those examples, like others often cited by this year’s back-of-the-pack candidates, took place before presidential campaigns had become entirely nationalized. Nowadays, Democrats at campaign rallies in rural Iowa are more likely to recite talking points they have heard on cable news or social media than something they have read in their local newspaper.

Collectively, the 10 Democrats who appeared on the debate stage in Houston this month have spent more than twice as much money on Facebook advertisements targeting Iowans since June 29 than they have on ads targeting people in New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, according to data from Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic political firm.

No candidate in the race has a bigger chasm between online investments in the first two nominating states than Harris, of California, who since June 29 has spent $115,178 on Facebook ads in Iowa but just $2,164 on such ads in New Hampshire.

After some grumbling that she had gone more than a month since last visiting the state, Harris was overheard last week saying she was “moving to Iowa,” with an expletive added for emphasis. Her team announced last week that it would add 60 staff members and open 10 more offices, and she plans to return weekly until Halloween. Her campaign manager told reporters she was aiming for a top-three finish in the state.

The historically large field has left even the candidates unclear about how many Democrats will have a plausible claim to continue on to New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Harris called a third-place showing a goal but said she didn’t know if a failure to meet that threshold would doom her campaign.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said before a campaign stop Friday in Cedar Falls. “I think it will be a confluence of factors that ultimately decides how long anyone stays in and what that means.”

A new poll from The Des Moines Register and CNN, released Saturday night, showed a reordering of the Democratic field. For the first time in the Register’s poll this year, Warren, of Massachusetts, at 22% support, led Biden, who the survey found was the first choice of 20% of would-be caucusgoers. Sanders, of Vermont, placed third, at 11%, with Buttigieg at 9% and Harris at 6%.

“This is the first major shake-up” of the race, the Register’s pollster, Ann Selzer, told the paper.

The poll found that just 1 in 5 likely caucusgoers said they had made up their minds, and 63% could still be persuaded to shift their support to someone else.

Klobuchar who was tied for sixth in the poll, said after presiding over the opening of a campaign office Friday in Cedar Rapids that there may be more than twice as many tickets out of Iowa as usual.

“You could be No. 6,” Klobuchar said before the poll results were announced. “I’m really serious, in a 20-person field and people will go, ‘Not bad.’ They’re going to look at who is in the top eight.”

Buttigieg predicted a smaller number of candidates would survive Iowa.

“I don’t know how many people can emerge. I think that comes down to how many people voters can keep track of,” he said. “I’d be shocked if it’s more than five.”

At the moment, all of the Democratic candidates are chasing Warren. She is drawing the largest crowds in the field — 2,000 came to see her Thursday night in Iowa City, two hours after and 3 miles away from a stop by Harris in Coralville that drew about 200 to a brewery.

Warren declined Sunday to take a victory lap over her new Iowa polling standing.

“I don’t do polls,” she said in Detroit, where she marched with striking autoworkers outside a General Motors plant. “We are still months away from the Iowa caucuses and the first primary elections.”

Challengers to Biden and Warren are augmenting their Iowa operations, adding staff, opening offices, collecting endorsements and starting new fundraising appeals as they aim to create the aura of momentum while building organizations to turn out supporters for the state’s caucuses.

Klobuchar, from neighboring Minnesota, has support from more current and former Iowa state lawmakers than any other 2020 presidential candidate, according to Iowa Starting Line, a political news website.

And Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who tied with Klobuchar in the Register’s poll, issued an SOS to supporters over the weekend, saying that without an infusion of $1.7 million by the end of the month his campaign may no longer be viable.

While Democrats elsewhere in the country, representing a national party that is increasingly diverse, offer quadrennial grumbling about Iowa, officials here aim to use their status to force the presidential candidates to focus on local issues.

J.D. Scholten, a Democrat running for the seat held by Rep. Steve King in a 39-county section of northwest Iowa, said he will soon schedule campaign stops across his district with each of the presidential campaigns in towns of 1,000 people or less to test their appeal to rural voters.

“I really want to see the engagement,” Scholten said at the steak fry on Saturday, which drew more than 12,000 people. “I think that’s where I’ll see. No polling can tell me, nothing like that. I want to see whether the people’s heads nod or not.”

WEBSTER CITY, Iowa — Iowa’s presidential caucuses disenfranchise huge blocs of voters. The state is 91% white. It is not easy to get to, or get around in. But to a greater degree than in recent campaigns, this unrepresentative and idiosyncratic state is proving that it is the only electoral battleground that matters for Democrats from now until caucus night Feb. 3.

2020 Democrats Go All In on Iowa

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden is 76 years old and prone to sometimes-rambling monologues with antiquated references. But if his age and missteps are supposed to be liabilities, they haven’t helped rivals who have tried to use them to their advantage.

Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, was the latest to learn that the hard way, taking direct aim at Biden’s age, and memory, in last Thursday’s debate. It didn’t work for Castro — amid a backlash, he lost a key endorsement over the weekend — and it hasn’t worked throughout the 2020 campaign.

While younger candidates have presented themselves as agents of generational change, it is three septuagenarians who have emerged as the front-runners: Biden, 78-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and 70-year-old Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They have generated the most support and enthusiasm, and taken their place in the top tier of the polls as they seek to challenge a president who is 73 himself.

And neither their age, nor Biden’s sometimes unsteady speaking performance, has convinced voters to get behind other candidates perceived as untested on the national stage.

“I ran a generational campaign that wanted to take on issues that were affecting my generation and future generations,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, who centered his presidential campaign around gun violence and student debt before withdrawing in July. “Those issues are really important, but beating Donald Trump is the most important thing that most voters want. I just sensed that they weren’t going to roll the dice on a generational candidate.”

The debate last week produced further scrutiny of age as a factor in the primary. Within days, Biden, Sanders and Warren were all asked whether they would release their medical records — and said they would. Even a hoarse voice that forced Sanders to cancel some events Monday and Tuesday was subject to some age-related speculation.

Biden’s debate performance left him once again open to questions about his age and acuity. He bungled the name of Moms Demand Action, the nation’s leading gun control group. He answered a question about institutional racism with a rambling tangent that included the suggestion that parents “make sure you have the record player on at night.” During the July debate, Biden forgot whether he was directing voters to his website or signing them up to receive text messages from the campaign.

Some voters have noticed. “I want Joe Biden to be able to complete a sentence better than I can,” said Melanie Gee, 58, a retired antiques dealer who attended a women’s event in Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday. “I don’t think he’s senile. I just think he’s not as a sharp as I want him to be.”

Yvette Simpson, chief executive of Democracy for America, a liberal group, said she worried about Biden’s ability to “deliver a clear message at a time when a clear message is important to the American people.’’

But while Biden’s missteps have at times put him on the defensive, his rivals have struggled to frame them in a way that diminishes him and enhances their own candidacies. Sometimes it just looks mean-spirited.

Castro took the starkest shot yet at Biden’s capabilities during a heated exchange over health care policy at the debate. “Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?” Castro said, repeating himself three times. It had the effect of thrusting out into the open a fact that has been the subtext of other candidates’ strategies for months.

Later that night, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey also expressed reservations about Biden, telling CNN that “there are definitely moments when you listen to Joe Biden and you just wonder.”

The attacks failed. By Sunday, Booker had backed off his Biden criticism — not the first time he had done so during the campaign.

And Rep. Vicente González of Texas defected from supporting Castro to Biden, in part because of Castro’s provocative questions on the debate stage, according to people familiar with his decision.

“If you’re polling in the low single digits and you’re not raising any resources and you’re fracturing your party and you’re just getting your supporters to be upset at other candidates, it certainly can’t be a good thing for our party,” González said Sunday on CNN, alluding to Castro’s attack.

At the same time, Biden’s defenders become protective of him when pressed with questions about his age. Former Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who is neutral in the 2020 primary, said criticisms of Biden’s age are “ageist.”

“He started off very strong and as it went on, he was trying to get in too many things, too many facts,” Boxer, 78, said of Biden’s debate performance. “It’s very hard standing there for three hours. I don’t care if you’re 55 years old.”

“That is just political attacks, right now people trying to figure out any way to try to knock the front-runner down,” Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama said Sunday after attending a church service with Biden, whom he backs. “Joe’s going to be Joe. And that’s why people love him, and they know his history.”

There has been a clear recalibration among the second-tier candidates, who seem to have realized that drawing clear age contrasts with Biden — as Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, had been doing since his campaign began — is a losing strategy.

And not all of Biden’s younger rivals are eager to stress their age difference. “Who the hell cares,” Beto O’Rourke said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “The last thing I care about is Joe Biden’s age.”

For Biden, no concern is raised more consistently by voters than his age, a subject Biden himself has said is fair game. When asked by reporters for his response, he often instructs voters to watch him in action on the trail, where he has made shows of physical force by sprinting through parades or lingering late into the evening to shake hands.

In July, Biden’s doctor said that he was in “excellent physical condition.”

Black voters, who comprise a critical bloc of Biden’s support, are not punishing him for his age, said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, a super PAC focused on African-American Democrats. The black primary electorate skews older and is sympathetic to Biden’s age, she said.

“A lot of the age critique centers on cultural issues, record players and texting, which many of those voters struggle with as well but don’t see as disqualifying,” Shropshire said.

Sanders, who is 15 months older than Biden, and Warren do not face the degree of scrutiny about their age that Biden does, even as some voters at their events admit they would like to see someone younger elected president.

Sanders’ events are high-energy affairs, punctuated by the senator frequently waving his arms to emphasize his points. It also helps that he rarely deviates from themes in his stump speech, affording him far fewer opportunities to make off-the-cuff gaffes.

Still, he lost his voice during a campaign swing through Iowa and Colorado last week — a fact that became evident to millions watching last week’s debate.

“I kind of lost my voice somewhere in Colorado, and I hope I don’t have to go back there right away to find it again,” he joked Saturday in Las Vegas.

Some on the Sanders team have acknowledged privately that his raspiness is not his best look. The Sanders campaign cut short a planned swing through South Carolina on Monday and Tuesday. The campaign said he was “feeling great” but would return home to Vermont to “rest his vocal cords.”

Among the three candidates in their 70s atop the polls, Warren is the most crisp when speaking to crowds and fielding questions on the debate stage.

“The medical records will be there, and anybody’s welcome to take a look at them,” she said. “And what I’m hoping is, we’re going to get to do a lot more town halls between now and then, and more after that.”

If Warren wants her town halls and public appearances to speak for themselves on her stamina, she is likely aware that her entrances and exits are part of the case. She sprints as she enters campaign events. A video of her jogging across a grassy field at an event in New Hampshire last month went viral, and she was even caught on camera running into Penn Station in New York to catch a train earlier this year.

“Age is a figure of speech,” said Harry Reid, the former Senate Democratic leader, who is 79. “I think it’s an exaggeration to start crossing people off the list because they’re 70 years old.”

Talking About Age of Front-Runners Isn't Helping Rivals Gain Ground

(Political Memo)

A debate qualifying process that was equal parts spectacle and grievance session ticked toward a midnight deadline Wednesday with one thing certain: The Democratic presidential race is entering a new, field-culling phase. And the stage is about to feel smaller, even if not everyone will go quietly.

Low-polling candidates aware of the debate rules for months spent the otherwise sleepy pre-Labor Day week moaning about being left out of the next debate, on Sept. 12. The mid-tier candidates, assured of making that debate and the next one in October, began to look ahead anxiously to the winter debates. And the top-tier candidates prepared, finally, to all appear on stage together.

All of it adds up to the biggest winnowing moment so far of a 2020 presidential field that at one point featured two dozen candidates: the elimination of long-shot candidates who have crowded debate stages, competed for the attention of overwhelmed voters and clustered at forums and cattle calls across the country this summer.

Some winnowing has come voluntarily. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said Wednesday she was dropping out of the race, citing her failure to make the next debate as a setback she could not overcome. Low-performing candidates like Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts have bowed to political reality in recent weeks and left the race; others have been slower to take public hints, insisting that their breakthrough may yet come.

The frenetic nature of the process was in part a result of a set of rules that extended the uncertainty to the final hours: Back in May, the Democratic National Committee chairman, Tom Perez, announced the threshold for the September and October debates: Candidates would need to have 130,000 individual donors and receive at least 2% support in four qualifying polls.

The deadline was 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Two new polls released in the morning did not change the equation, but it did send reporters and campaign operatives scrambling to discover whether any further polls would be released. By early evening, though, it seemed clear that no eleventh-hour reprieve was coming for billionaire Tom Steyer, who needed one more 2% showing to qualify, or for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who needed two more.

That meant the debate field would be set at 10, and limit the proceedings to one night, in contrast to the first two debates that split 20 candidates over two nights and prevented face-to-face showdowns between some of the top candidates. For instance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren did not appear on the same night as former Vice President Joe Biden in either debate.

The debate process created different camps in the party. Many Democrats were crossing their fingers that Steyer didn’t force his way into the September debate and make it a two-night affair, but few were willing to criticize him publicly because he is one of the party’s biggest donors. Some Democrats are angry with Perez over long-established qualification rules, while others have quiet sympathy for what they say is a thankless plight.

And while party officials spent the summer humoring the no-shot candidates who have failed to demonstrate support through fundraising or polling, patience among some Democrats was running low.

“If you are a few months before the Iowa caucuses and you can’t get 130,000 donors and can’t crack 2% in a couple of polls, that’s on you,” said Mo Elleithee, a former top DNC official who is now the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics. “There is an appetite to start being able to focus on the candidates who have demonstrated the most movement in this race. That is probably shared by a lot of Democratic primary voters.”

Still, some party officials lamented a system that limited exposure for lesser-known candidates. The Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman, Jane Kleeb, a leading figure among rural Democrats, said a debate process that excluded Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana was bad for a party trying to win back voters who flocked to President Donald Trump in 2016.

“Voters aren’t even going to know who Steve Bullock is and that we have a governor representing a red state and doing it with strong progressive values,” Kleeb said. “To me it shows the strength of our party that we have so many people running.”

Even in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state where Democrats are famously welcoming to almost everyone who shows up and calls themselves a presidential candidate, officials have grown tired of devoting time to candidates who can’t put up a crooked polling number.

“Iowans aren’t the ones to say, ‘Yeah, you’re done,’” said Bryce Smith, the Democratic Party chairman in Dallas County, in suburban Des Moines. “But people generally want a clearer pathway forward, and that obviously involves fewer people running.”

Candidates on the brink of missing the debate spent this week airing grievances and regrets. In a last-ditch bid to make the debate, Gillibrand this month bought more than $1 million in ads in New Hampshire and Iowa, hoping to garner enough support to reach the 2% polling threshold.

But there were no qualifying polls in those two states after the ads began airing and before Wednesday’s deadline, and Gillibrand acknowledged that without the exposure of a debate, “I just didn’t see our path.”

Steyer’s campaign Wednesday expressed disappointment that there have been no qualifying polls from Nevada. Eight of the past nine qualifying polls have been surveys of the national Democratic electorate. Steyer hasn’t reached 2% in any of them, while he has reached that threshold in polls of Iowa and South Carolina, two of the four early-voting states where he has spent $7 million on TV advertising.

“We were given the rules, we were playing by the rules,” a Steyer spokesman, Alberto Lammers, said. “This is not a national race. Everybody who understands the race understands how this works.”

Then there are Bullock and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. Neither is particularly close to qualifying for additional debates. They are well short in donors, and neither has reached 2% in a single qualifying poll since February.

Bennet has for months been a vocal critic of the debate qualification process, and Wednesday his campaign sent a list of 11 questions to Perez, complaining about the qualification rules, demanding to know why DNC members and state party leaders were not consulted on the thresholds.

Bullock’s campaign lamented “arbitrary DNC debate rules” and said the forums should have room for the only candidate in the race who won a state Trump carried in 2016.

Bullock pledged to stay in the race through the Iowa caucuses in February whether or not he makes the debates.

“The fact is in many ways you have rules that have empowered Google and Facebook,” he said. “I don’t think it’s empowered the Democratic Party. History has shown time and time again that it’s not what happens in September that determines who our nominee is or who is successful.”

That argument elicits little sympathy at the national committee.

“The DNC is asking candidates to reach 2% in four polls,” a committee spokeswoman, Xochitl Hinojosa, said Wednesday. “That is not high at all. There have been 21 qualifying polls. That is 21 opportunities to reach 2% in four polls. That is not hard.”

The debate drama is not limited to the fall debates. Aides to candidates who will appear next month in Houston expressed concern about as-yet-unannounced rising thresholds to participate in the party’s November and December debates.

If Perez again raises the donor threshold, it would force campaigns to redirect money earmarked for early-state organizing toward social media campaigns, in order to drive up donor numbers. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, whose fundraising has dried up after a fast start, emailed supporters Tuesday, warning that without more contributions, he could be left off the winter debate stage.

While Gillibrand and others have withdrawn, no top-tier candidate has — a break from the past two crowded presidential campaigns.

Tim Pawlenty terminated his 2012 campaign in the Republican primary in August 2011 after losing the Ames Straw Poll to a fellow Minnesotan, Michele Bachmann. Scott Walker quit the 2016 race in September 2015 when his big-spending campaign ran out of money.

“Anyone who isn’t going to be on the debate stage in September when voters are starting to tune in is essentially running a zombie campaign,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked for Pawlenty and Marco Rubio in 2016. “Voters want to support people on the debate stage. The takeaway from the last couple cycles is that the only thing that matters is debates.”

If nothing else, the downsizing of the September debate week — one overstuffed stage instead of two — has afforded weary Democrats a prospective night off. Even political die-hards had groaned at the specter of a second debate on a Friday evening, viewing it as a kind of municipal homework assignment.

Of course, the respite may be short-lived: With one more qualifying poll, Steyer will make the October debate stage, likely making that a two-night affair.

Democratic Candidates Jostle, and Gripe, as Debates Winnow the Field

WASHINGTON — The suspense was high. The hour was late. The questions about the next Democratic debate were many: Ten candidates or 11? Two nights or one? One billionaire or none?

Hickenlooper, who is mired at the bottom of public polling of the presidential race, hopped into Sen. Michael Bennet’s car on Friday night in this Northern Iowa town to discuss his impending decision, said Democrats familiar with the discussion, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential talks.

The two drove around Clear Lake for about 20 minutes ahead of the Wing Ding dinner, a Democratic fundraiser that drew 21 presidential candidates. Aides and advisers to the two men, who have been both allies and rivals over their careers in Colorado politics, declined to reveal what was discussed.

Officials who have been in discussions with the Hickenlooper campaign said Tuesday that the former two-term governor is giving serious consideration to switching to the Senate race but stressed that a final decision has not yet been made. Short of a massive change in political momentum, Hickenlooper is certain to fail to qualify for the next round of presidential debates in September, an additional blow to a campaign struggling to attract attention and financial contributions.

A spokesman for Hickenlooper, Peter Cunningham, declined to comment on the former governor’s plans or what was discussed during his Friday night drive with Bennet, who is also running for president. A Bennet aide also declined to comment on their discussion.

Recent days have brought unsubtle messages that high-ranking Democratic officials in Colorado and Washington believe Hickenlooper is in the wrong race.

The Denver Post on Sunday published polling done on behalf of “a national Democratic group involved in Senate races” that showed Hickenlooper holding a 51-point lead over two other Democrats in the state’s 2020 Senate race.

On Monday, the 314 Action Fund, a super PAC that backs candidates who are scientists, announced a “Draft Hick for Senate” campaign along with a poll it commissioned showing Hickenlooper leading Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican seeking reelection, by 13 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup.

Colorado is key to Democratic hopes of retaking a Senate majority in the 2020 election. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, has spent months trying to recruit Hickenlooper to enter the contest to face Gardner. Hickenlooper would join a Democratic primary that already has 11 declared candidates, including Mike Johnston, a former state senator who placed third in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor; Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado House speaker; John Walsh, a former U.S. attorney for Colorado; and Dan Baer, a former Obama administration official.

Hickenlooper has pooh-poohed his interest in running for the Senate. In February he told reporters in Iowa that he is “not cut out to be a senator.”

Gardner is seeking a second term in office but faces headwinds in a state where President Donald Trump is highly unpopular. In 2016 Trump lost Colorado to Hillary Clinton by five points. A July poll of likely Colorado voters from a Republican-aligned firm found Trump with a 39% approval rating in the state and concluded he trails a generic Democratic general election opponent by 12 percentage points.

Democrats must win a net of three Republican-held Senate seats and win the White House to take control of the Senate.

Hickenlooper in recent weeks has seen an exodus of senior campaign aides, who advised him in the spring to end his presidential bid if his fundraising and polling status did not improve by the end of July. He qualified and participated in the first two televised debates in June and July, but his performances were not memorable and there has been little improvement in his fundraising, according to people familiar with his campaign’s finances.

During the three-month fundraising period that ended June 30, Hickenlooper raised $1.1 million and spent $1.7 million, an unsustainable pattern for a candidate who has not caught fire with voters. He had $800,000 in his campaign account at the end of June, according to his Federal Election Commission report.

Johnston and Baer each raised more campaign funds for their Senate campaigns in the second quarter than Hickenlooper did for his presidential bid.

Yet when he appeared before Democratic activists in Clear Lake Friday night, Hickenlooper appeared unbowed. Amid the sounds of people chattering and eating their baked beans and pulled pork, he said his case for the presidency relies on his stature as a chief executive untarred by Washington politics.

“My plan to beat Donald Trump is to start by looking at our history,” Hickenlooper said. “No sitting senator has ever beaten an incumbent president. Go backwards with Clinton to Reagan to Carter to Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson, all former governors who defeated incumbent presidents. Just want to make that clear — governors are closer to the people.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/us/politics/john-hickenlooper-2020-senate.html" id="d346f9f1-b483-305a-a69c-6b3e71c98c84">The New York Times</a>.

Hickenlooper Mulling Ending Presidential Bid to Run for Senate

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa — Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado is in discussions about ending his presidential bid and entering the race for his state’s Republican-held Senate seat, potentially giving Democrats a strong candidate in a race they must win to have hopes of retaking the chamber in 2021, according to four Democrats familiar with his thinking.

“I have it on the TV right now,” Reza Darvishian, a State Department security engineer, told Helmer on the porch of his home. “I’m sick of listening to all of this stuff.”

That is not what the Republican incumbent in the race, Tim Hugo, says he is hearing from his constituents. Gun violence is of little concern to voters, Hugo said. Instead they want to talk about the same issues that have animated suburban voters for the generation he’s been in office.

“I ask people, ‘How can I help?’” Hugo said. “The answers that come back are transportation, schools, taxes and even illegal immigration.”

The mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, last weekend have rebooted the national discussion over gun violence and ignited a bitter fight between Democrats and President Donald Trump over whether his divisive rhetoric encouraged the violence. Now Virginia’s off-year elections in November loom as the first political battlefield on the issue. Republicans hold only one-vote majorities in both the House and Senate. Democrats are aiming to capture both chambers and pass new gun control legislation next year.

CENTREVILLE, Va. — At door after door, house after house, Dan Helmer, a Democrat running for the Virginia House of Delegates, found voters of both parties telling him one thing as he canvassed for support Tuesday night: Do something about the mass shootings.

Reid J. Epstein

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