Democrats grapple with a Bernie ticket as Sanders rides Nevada win into SC
Fresh off a win in Nevada, Bernie Sanders has found himself in a comfortable position heading into the final week of campaigning for South Carolina’s Saturday Democratic presidential primary, when he will test the prevailing narrative of former Vice President Joe Biden’s dominance here.
“He’s sitting in a very good spot,” Sanders supporter state Rep. Krystle Matthews, D-Berkeley, told The State last week. “I think he’s going to do much, much better than he did in 2016. People are listening to his message, and I also think that people are very engaged.”
Matthews could end up being right.
A new Winthrop University poll out Thursday put Sanders in second to Biden — 19% to 24%, respectively — a margin that has shrunk considerably since just last fall signaling that Biden’s S.C. “firewall” might be cracking.
But Sanders’ successes in the first three nominating contests — before his win in Nevada, he came in second in Iowa delegates and finished first in New Hampshire — have some S.C. Democrats worried, even those who aren’t backing Biden’s bid.
This week, several strong backers of longtime S.C. front-runner Biden and recently surging California businessman Tom Steyer told The State that they worry what the unintended consequences of a Sanders nomination may mean in a state with competitive down ballot races — from Congress to the State House.
“I think it is huge and incredibly concerning,” said Brady Quirk-Garvan, the former chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party, who stepped down last year to join then-candidate U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s campaign but has not made another public endorsement.
The unintended consequences of Sanders at the top of the ticket include forcing Democrats running in moderate districts (Cunningham) or moderate states (Jaime Harrison, the likely challenger to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham) to answer for a more progressive candidate at the top of the ticket.
Biden would give those candidates more cover, political observers say. Meanwhile, they add, Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, would give Republicans fuel to question whether the specter of socialism would indeed become a reality under a Sanders administration.
It’s an outcome that S.C. Republicans are eager to predict. Cunningham has had to walk a fine line to avoid swaying too far to the left after winning a longtime conservative seat in the Lowcountry in the 2018 midterms, a win helped by Republican support.
Already, Republicans have tried repeatedly to tie Cunningham to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and national Democrats. Cunningham was elected to a conservative district by pledging to buck party politics and deliver on issues that matter to residents of the coastal district.
South Carolina Democrats are in danger of ceding more than political real estate if they lose seats. With the 2020 U.S. Census, the state will face another redistricting.
“I think that a Bernie Sanders nomination means that Democrats, especially in South Carolina ... will do poorly if he is the nominee,” Quirk-Garvan said. “Also what concerns me, this is the year where our electorate gains matter because we’re going to do redistricting. And if we lose Senate seats, State House seats, if we lose seats we’re even more of a minority and (it could be) detrimental for the next decade.”
But that is hardly a worry for the U.S. senator from Vermont, who is set to hold three separate rallies in South Carolina next week — North Charleston and Myrtle Beach Wednesday, then outside of the State House in Columbia on Friday.
“I‘ve got news for the Republican establishment,” Sanders tweeted ahead of the Nevada caucuses. “I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”
And it is certainly not a concern for many of Sanders’ most ardent supporters, who say that Sanders — unlike the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — is capable of tapping into a more diverse electorate, including younger, college-aged voters.
“The senator’s surging in the state,” said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 campaign, who based that surge in large part on Sanders’ ability to build off of his 2016 campaign and deepen relationships with voters across the state.
Turner, who often considers South Carolina her second home, said Sanders has been to the state at least a dozen times over the past year and has attended more than 60 events. He’s also poured strong surrogates into the state, including actor Danny Glover and political activist and author Cornel West.
“He knows very clearly that he has to earn every single vote,” Turner said.
Sanders’ supporters on the ground agree.
“I believe he has the best opportunity to go to the White House,” said state Rep. Ivory Thigpen, D-Richland, a Sanders’ state campaign co-chair, who said his original endorsement of Sanders came by way of political calculations.
“If you look at four years ago and what took place, so many people said that (President Donald) Trump was unelectable, but what he did was he excited the electorate, particularly in the demographic that was historically underperforming: those who did not vote, or (were) less likely to vote,” Thigpen said.
“He got them energized. How? He spoke to their concerns, and fears and issues, as well as (he) gave them something to hope in, even if it was not as feasible or practical as people would have liked.”
Sanders’ ground game has considerably improved since 2016, when he was criticized for not spending enough time and resources in South Carolina. The Sanders campaign said this weekend it had knocked on roughly 80,000 doors over the past week.
“Bernie has been rocking with us since the beginning of time,” Matthews, the Berkeley County state lawmaker, said. “He’s not doing anything different. He’s one of the only candidates who hasn’t had to apologize to our community for anything that he’s said ... and that speaks a lot to who he is as a person.”
‘Millions of people believe in what he believes in’
Post Nevada, that ground game is sure to intensify in South Carolina, Sanders supporters say.
“It’s night and day,” Thigpen said comparing 2016 to 2020. “In 2016, a lot of African Americans had never heard of the senator from Vermont. They didn’t know anybody who was from Vermont or lived near Vermont. He’s had a ground game here since then.”
But while Sanders’ ground game intensifies, his critics say so will calls on Sanders’ record and identity as a democratic socialist.
“South Carolinians don’t want socialism,” U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham said in a statement provided to the Post and Courier of Charleston last week, the first time he has weighed in on the 2020 race. “We want to know how you are going to get things done and how you are going to pay for them. Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone is not something the Lowcountry wants and not something I’d ever support.”
And while Cunningham has not explicitly endorsed anyone, Quirk-Garvan said his remarks are nothing to be dismissed.
“In a typical year, if a candidate didn’t like someone, they’d probably keep that to themselves,” Quirk-Garvan said. “It’s a bold statement for a politician to make.”
Turner told The State this week that Cunningham is entitled to his opinion, but added, “his opinion goes against the facts.”
“The fact of the matter,” Turner said, “millions of people believe in what he believes in.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
