Joe Biden’s Campaign Reportedly In Contact With Pete Buttigieg’s Team About Consolidating Support
Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the race for president, but could still be making his mark by moving his support over to Joe Biden.
Buttigieg announced on Sunday night that he would be suspending his campaign — an especially abrupt exit from the race. Reports noted that the former South Bend mayor was on a plane en route to Texas for a town hall but changed course mid-flight and traveled back to Indiana to make the announcement that he was dropping out.
There was early speculation that Buttigieg may be confirming his endorsement of Biden, but he instead used Sunday’s announcement to thank supporters and pledge that the movement he started would continue. There may have been more happening behind the scenes, however. MSNBC anchor Craig Melvin reported on Twitter that Buttigieg’s camp had already reached out to Biden’s campaign about the possibility of consolidating support and that the two sides exchanged voicemails but did not yet connect.
It was not yet clear what kind of support they might be consolidating, but a report from earlier on Sunday pointed out that Biden had begun to attract some key donors away from the campaigns of both Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
After entering the race last April with no national stature, the former mayor was able to climb quickly in a historically crowded field for the Democratic nomination. Buttigieg had invested considerable resources into the first state to vote, ultimately earning a narrow victory in the Iowa caucus, but was unable to capture momentum from that victory and performed poorly in the three contests that followed.
According to Reuters, Buttigieg’s exit was already expected to give a boost to Biden, who occupies the same moderate lane.
As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight noted on Twitter, Buttigieg’s departure could deal a double blow to Sanders, not only shifting votes over to Biden but also to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. While Warren is not currently a threat to the pledged delegate lead that Sanders holds, she could cut into his expected victories on Tuesday.
Buttigieg’s exit could also help cover some of the perceived shortcomings of Biden’s campaign, which has spent little money and no time campaigning in the Super Tuesday states before Saturday’s win in South Carolina. As Tiana Lowe of the Washington Examiner noted, the former vice president was at risk of leaving some of Tuesday’s contests with no delegates, but Buttigieg’s departure may allow him to stay more competitive with Sanders or at least tamp down the margin of victory for the Vermont senator.
“But between Bernie Sanders’ recent national surge and Michael Bloomberg spending half a billion to cut into Biden’s moderate lane, Biden seemed non-viable in too many states to win a significant portion of Super Tuesday delegates. Buttigieg, however, may have just given him the opening he needs,” Lowe wrote.
