Joe Biden bus tour to hit SC pavement with ‘Barbershop’ actor, Olympic figure skater
A bus bearing Joe Biden’s name in giant letters and carrying a little star power will hit S.C. roads soon to promote the former vice president’s bid for the White House.
Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan and actor Sean Patrick Thomas — whose films include “Barbershop,” “Cruel Intentions” and “Save the Last Dance” — are among the surrogates for Biden that will stop at S.C. beauty shops and historically black colleges.
Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, also will return to the state Jan. 19 and 20, for the NAACP’s King Day at the Dome. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also has been confirmed as attending the annual march and rally.
Biden’s campaign will launch a The four-day “South Carolina Soul of the Nation” surrogate bus tour begins Wednesday and will stop in 15 counties as Biden aims to keep a months-long polling lead in South Carolina while he campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The RV trek through the Palmetto State will mirror Biden’s campaign efforts in early-voting state Iowa, where his “No Malarkey” bus tour kicked off last fall, putting Biden in Iowa’s rural counties in hopes of gaining momentum ahead of that state’s Feb. 3 caucuses.
Next week, Biden’s S.C. bus will criss-cross through South Carolina stopping at historically black colleges — for example, Claflin University in Orangeburg and Allen University in Columbia — and heading to rural areas, to barber and beauty shops and the state’s coastal communities.
In addition to Kwan and Thomas, other surrogates include Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Biden’s campaign; U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana; Biden’s sister Valerie Biden Owens; and Randall Woodfin, the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama.
State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, an influential Charleston Democrat who endorsed Biden on Monday, and state Reps. Bill Clyburn, D-Aiken, and Marvin Pendarvis, D-Charleston, also will join the bus tour.
“This tour will demonstrate Joe’s ability to bring people together at a time when the stakes could not be higher,” said Biden’s South Carolina state director Kendall Corley in a statement.
Heading into the first debate of the New Year, Biden is in a three-way tie for first — 23% — in Iowa with Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, according to the latest CBS News/YouGov poll.
Sanders holds a lead — 27% — in New Hampshire, according to the same poll.
Though no recent polling has been done in South Carolina since the New Year, Biden has in the past been able to hold a lead despite entering the race later than his opponents in large part because of his support among black voters in South Carolina.
Black voters make up two-thirds of South Carolina’s Democratic Party primary electorate.
Biden and other candidates also will return to the state Feb. 25 for South Carolina’s presidential primary debate in Charleston, days before the state’s “First in the South” presidential primary on Feb. 29.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 8:30 AM.
