2020 Democratic holdouts wait for Harris, Warren to trip
Beto O’Rourke has no timetable for deciding if he’ll run for president. Terry McAuliffe could stay on the sidelines until March, and Steve Bullock just opened a Montana legislative session that likely would push back any announcement as far as April or May.
Amid a series of high-profile campaign announcements in January — and with Cory Booker’s entry Friday continuing the push this month — another class of Democrats is lying in wait. They say they just haven’t decided. But they’re also sizing up the emerging field — and hoping for one or more of the early front-runners to stumble.
“I think what you’re seeing right now, if you look at the field, people are taking a minute to see how it’s shaping up and what lanes there are, so that when they enter, there’s a clear argument to be made about what’s missing,” said an adviser to one Democratic contender who is waiting to make an announcement. “The people who are getting in early have the advantage of sucking up some press oxygen. But that also comes with six months of consecutively being hit. … It’s hard to keep that momentum going for 13 months.”
A strategist with ties to another Democrat who is expected to run said that contender is making a similar calculation. They figure voters will be more receptive to newcomers by early summer, after copious media coverage of top-tier candidates such as Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.
Touching off a tour of early nominating states this week, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), told reporters he will make his decision about running in March, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. Other late decisions could come from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks chief executive and self-described lifelong Democrat who is mulling a run as an independent.
O’Rourke, who told POLITICO recently his decision could “potentially” take months, said, “There are people who are smarter on this stuff and study this stuff and are following this and say you’ve got to do it this way or get in by this point or get in in this way if you were to get in.”
However, he said, “I think the truth is that nobody knows right now the rules on any of this stuff. I think the rules are being written in the moment.”
In recent decades, late entrants into presidential primaries have fared poorly, having less time to court media attention and donors, hire staff, and organize in early primary states. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who entered the 2004 primary campaign months after his competitors in September 2003, enjoyed a bounce in public opinion polls before faltering in the early nominating states.
Four years later, Republican Fred Thompson entered his party’s primary in the fall of 2007, but quickly faded.
Schooling her rivals in the benefit of a well-orchestrated, early campaign launch, Harris in late January vaulted ahead of every Democrat other than former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
But with no obvious front-runner in 2020 — and with the rise of small-dollar fundraising limiting the influence of major Democratic donors — the opportunity for a late entrant to upend the race is gaining stock in some Democratic circles.
“I don’t think it matters as much as it used to, to get out early, to announce early,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who ran for president in 2008. “In the past, you wanted to announce early to get the major party donors and to get the workers. … But now things have changed dramatically. Online fundraising has replaced the big megadonors, and there are so many millennials and young people wanting to work that you can afford to wait and still get good workers.”
In the run-up to 2020, he said, “It’s OK to wait. Those that announce late … can afford to do that, when in the past it was folly.”
The lateness of a campaign announcement is a matter of degree, and most serious Democratic candidates are expected to announce their candidacies well before presidential debates begin this summer. Yet in the interim, candidates who are holding off do not appear to be missing out. Most donors and party activists have yet to commit to any one Democratic contender.
David Keith, a Democratic campaign strategist based in Chicago, said that as long as potential candidates can keep donors and influential Democrats from signing up with an announced rival, they might not suffer at all — and might benefit from speculation surrounding their looming decision.
“Suspense is certainly a part of politics,” Keith said. “And it keeps you in the game without being an official candidate.”
O’Rourke, the former congressman from Texas, has benefited from a deluge of publicity from a solo road trip through the Southwest and a “Draft Beto” effort encouraging him to run. Without a declared candidate, Democrats at a “Draft Beto” event in New Hampshire read aloud dispatches O’Rourke posted online from his road trip. Primary campaigns become more onerous for a candidate once he or she has announced.
“Before you go into the race, everybody wants you in it, and everybody is so friendly and nice from the media,” said Clark, a former NATO supreme allied commander. “As soon as you go in, they unload, and you can already see this happening. … Partly, it’s an effort by the campaigns to get the negatives out of the way. But partly it’s an effort by the media to take you down and create the controversy that builds reader interest.”
Nearly a year before Iowa holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Harris and Warren have come in for detailed examinations of their records, while 2020 contenders and potential candidates this week began feuding about policy positions related to health care and taxes.
“When you go in early, you get first dibs at the money raising, you get first dibs at staffers, you get first dibs at speaking opportunities,” Clark said. “When you go in later, you get the buildup of the anticipation — the friendly jousting of the media that says, ‘So and so may come in now, and boy, he or she would be wonderful.’”
Still, there are limits to how long one can wait. Ben LaBolt, a former White House aide and press secretary for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, said that “unless something crazy happens,” most candidates would need to announce by summer to have time to build name recognition, organize and raise money.
“It might be slightly different if you’re a self-funder or have national name ID that doesn’t need to be established for the first time,” he said. “But if you’ve got to define your brand, define your name with the electorate, organize on the ground in early states, organize a fundraising operation, there’s no time like the present to get in.”
“Back in the day, there was always some fanfare about a white knight jumping into the race late,” LaBolt said. “But Presidents Wesley Clark and Fred Thompson can tell you it didn’t work out particularly well.”
But James Carville, a former Bill Clinton strategist, said the 2020 primary is so unpredictable that a latecomer could succeed where such candidates have failed.
“It’s conceivable that there’s somebody who says, ‘I’d really like to be president, but if I get in this meat grinder, I don’t see how I come out of it,’” Carville said. “’And there’s some chance that the process will be difficult and everybody will get diminished at some point. … If it breaks down, and there’s some chance it will, then I will mount my white horse and come into battle.’”
Carville said, “I don’t know if it’s a good strategy, but it’s a strategy.”