Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager emails staff that she’s assessing next steps after ‘disappointing’ Super Tuesday
"This decision is in her hands."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is reassessing her path forward in the Democratic primary race, following her campaign’s “disappointing” Super Tuesday performance. And according to an email sent by her campaign manager Wednesday morning, the decision whether — or how — to proceed is up to the Massachusetts senator.
“Last night, we fell well short of viability goals and projections, and we are disappointed in the results,” Roger Lau wrote to campaign staffers, as ABC News first reported Wednesday morning.
According to CNN, the email was sent to everyone on the Warren’s campaign’s payroll, which numbered more than 1,000 people as of last month. It comes after the Massachusetts senator fell further behind in the 2020 primary race, failing to notch even a second-place finish in any of the 14 states that voted Tuesday, including her home state.
Lau said the campaign was still waiting to “a better sense of the final delegate math,” but admitted “we are obviously disappointed” with the results. Lau, a longtime advisor to the 70-year-old senator, wrote that Warren was “going to take time right now to think through the right way to continue this fight.”
“This decision is in her hands, and it’s important that she has the time and space to consider what comes next,” he wrote.
Here’s the full email from Elizabeth Warren campaign manager Roger Lau to staff this morning on what’s next: pic.twitter.com/93aAbeYczS
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 4, 2020
The email was sent as Warren reconsidered her campaign’s viability going forward. While votes are still being counted in western states like California, she currently stands more than 300 delegates behind both Biden and Sanders, according to a count by the Associated Press.
“Elizabeth is talking to her team to assess the path forward,” a campaign aide said Wednesday.
Following earlier underwhelming finishes in the first four primary contests, Lau had predicted a “strong delegate performance” on Tuesday, leading to a three-way race between Biden, Sanders, and Warren that would be decided at the convention. Last month, he said she was “poised” to finish in the top two in “over half” of the Super Tuesday states and in the top three in all of them.
However, the race winnowed quicker even than the Warren campaign expected, with two other more-moderate candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, dropping out to throw their support behind Biden ahead of the crucial voting day Tuesday, which — along with his decisive victory in South Carolina this past week — helped revive the former vice president’s campaign. Warren’s campaign was ultimately left without a single top-two result and placed third in just five of the 15 contests Tuesday, including American Samoa.
Mike Bloomberg, the other major candidate in the race, also dropped out Wednesday to endorse Biden, following his own disappointing performance Tuesday.
During a rally Tuesday night, Warren gave no indication of any plans to drop out, telling supporters in Detroit to disregard pundits and vote for whom they think would “make the best president.”
“When there is this much danger, do you decide to kind of get a little timid, back up, crouch down a little, or do you decide to fight back?” she said. “Me, I’m in this because I’m fighting back.”
Warren finished her speech before the reality of the Super Tuesday results began rolling in.
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