Month: October 2019

Joe Biden delivered a forceful rebuttal to criticism about his past stance on busing and his comments about segregationist senators, invoking his work alongside former President Barack Obama as he laid out his decades-long commitment to civil rights.

“I know and you know, I fought my heart out to ensure that civil rights and voting rights, equal rights are enforced everywhere,” Biden said at the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention on Friday. “These rights are not up to the states to decide. They’re our federal government’s duty to decide,” he added.

He also mentioned his former boss — whose hometown he was speaking in — multiple times, saying he and Obama shared a fierce commitment to civil rights.

"And by the way, with all due respect I say to Chicagoans and everyone: My president gets much too little credit for all that he did — he was one of the great presidents of the United States of America. And I’m tired of hearing about what he didn’t do," Biden said forcefully. "This man had a backbone like a ram rod!"

Biden’s fiery defense came the day after fellow White House hopeful Kamala Harris confronted him in a primary debate over recent comments in which Biden touted his ability to work civilly with segregationist senators, a clash Harris came out on the winning end of.

“It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris said Thursday of Biden’s work with two segregationist Democrats, in what would become a viral moment. “And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Biden on Friday was conciliatory for a moment before launching into his defense. “I heard and I listened to, and I respect Senator Harris,“ Biden said. But he argued, “we all know that 30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime commitment to civil rights.”

“I want to be clear about my record and position on racial justice, including busing. I never never, never ever opposed voluntary busing," he said, noting that the practice, aimed at desegregating U.S. schools, had made a difference in Harris’ life.

While Biden has asserted he was only opposed to federally-mandated busing, and has continued to defend that opposition, his past comments on the issue paint a murkier picture of where he stood.

This spring, The Washington Post unearthed an interview Biden gave to a local paper in 1975, in which he denounced any sort of quota system and said it was perhaps the practice of busing that was racist.

Biden on Thursday, and again Friday, cited his 1974 vote to sink an amendment that would have banned federal courts from ordering busing as a remedy to segregation, noting that the move was not politically popular at the time.

He argued that he instead supported federal action "to address root causes in our schools and communities" and tried "to change the way in which neighborhoods were segregated."

The former vice president has overwhelmingly been embraced by black Americans and civil rights advocates, and powerful black lawmakers have come to his defense in the wake of the segregationist comments. Biden leads his Democratic rivals among African Americans in most polls, a critical constituency for the party.

Biden has sought to pivot to his work for criminal justice throughout his time in the Senate and the White House and push the discussion toward the future, as he tried to do after Thursday’s debate.

"The discussion in this race today shouldn’t be about the past," he told the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. "We should be talking about how we can do better. How we can move forward."

He also returned to a line of attack on President Donald Trump’s 2017 equivocation between neo Nazis and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., which Biden used as the framework of his campaign launch.

“You know, I promise you, if I get elected president, I will be a president who stands against racism,” he said, vowing to fight the forces of “intolerance everywhere in our society, in our institutions and voting booths and in our hearts.”

Here he invoked Obama as well, noting that “Barack was a president our kids not only could but did look up to.”

“Look, what presidents say matters. It matters,” he added.

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A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity.

The main targets appear to be Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), four of the most prominent announced or prospective candidates for president.

A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hints at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary.

The cyber propaganda — which frequently picks at the rawest, most sensitive issues in public discourse — is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than in the 2016 presidential election, when online attacks designed to polarize and mislead voters first surfaced on a massive scale.

Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case, a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of the senator’s New Year’s Eve Instagram livestream.

Not all of the activity is organized. Much of it appears to be organic, a reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some of the candidates. But there are clear signs of a coordinated effort of undetermined size that shares similar characteristics with the computational propaganda attacks launched by online trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 presidential campaign, which special counsel Robert Mueller accused of aiming to undermine the political process and elevate Donald Trump.

“It looks like the 2020 presidential primary is going to be the next battleground to divide and confuse Americans,” said Brett Horvath, one of the founders of Guardians.ai, a tech company that works with a consortium of data scientists, academics and technologists to disrupt cyberattacks and protect pro-democracy groups from information warfare. “As it relates to information warfare in the 2020 cycle, we’re not on the verge of it — we’re already in the third inning.”

An analysis conducted for POLITICO by Guardians.ai found evidence that a relatively small cluster of accounts — and a broader group of accounts that amplify them — drove a disproportionate amount of the Twitter conversation about the four candidates over a recent 30-day period.

Using proprietary tools that measured the discussion surrounding the candidates in the Democratic field, Guardians.ai identified a cohort of roughly 200 accounts — including both unwitting real accounts and other “suspicious” and automated accounts that coordinate to spread their messages — that pumped out negative or extreme themes designed to damage the candidates.

This is the same core group of accounts the company first identified last year in a study as anchoring a wide-scale influence campaign in the 2018 elections.

Since the beginning of the year, those accounts began specifically directing their output at Harris, O’Rourke, Sanders and Warren, and were amplified by an even wider grouping of accounts. Over a recent 30-day period, between 2 percent and 15 percent of all Twitter mentions of the four candidates emanated in some way from within that cluster of accounts, according to the Guardians.ai findings. In that time frame, all four candidates collectively had 6.8 million mentions on Twitter.

“We can conclusively state that a large group of suspicious accounts that were active in one of the largest influence operations of the 2018 cycle is now engaged in sustained and ongoing activity for the 2020 cycle,” Horvath said.

Amarnath Gupta, a research scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego who monitors social media activity, said he’s also seen a recent surge in Twitter activity negatively targeting three candidates — O’Rourke, Harris and Warren.

That increased activity includes a rise in the sheer volume of tweets, the rate at which they are being posted and the appearance of “cluster behavior” tied to the three candidates.

“I can say that from a very, very cursory look, a lot of the information is negatively biased with respect to sentiment analysis,” said Gupta, who partnered with Guardians.ai on a 2018 study.

According to the Guardians.ai analysis, Harris attracted the most overall Twitter activity among the 2020 candidates it looked at, with more than 2.5 million mentions over the 30-day period.

She was also among the most targeted. One widely seen tweet employed racist and sexist stereotypes in an attempt to sensationalize Harris’ relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. That tweet — and subsequent retweets and mentions tied to it — made 8.6 million “potential impressions” online, according to Guardians.ai, an upper limit calculation of the number of people who might have seen it based on the accounts the cluster follows, who follows accounts within the cluster and who has engaged with the tweet.

Another racially charged tweet was directed at O’Rourke. The Twitter profile of the user where it originated indicates the account was created in May 2018, but it had authored just one tweet since then — in January, when the account announced it had breaking news about the former Texas congressman leaving a message using racist language on an answering machine in the 1990s. That tweet garnered 1.3 million potential impressions on the platform, according to Guardians.ai.

A separate Guardians.ai study that looked at the focus of the 200 account group on voter fraud and false and/or misleading narratives about election integrity — published just before the midterm elections and co-authored by Horvath, Zach Verdin and Alicia Serrani — reported that the accounts generated or were mentioned in more than 140 million tweets over the prior year.

That cluster of accounts was the driving force behind an effort to aggressively advance conspiracy theories in the 2018 midterms, ranging from misinformation about voter fraud to narratives involving a caravan coming to the United States, and even advocacy of violence.

Horvath asserts that the activity surrounding the cluster represents an evolution of misinformation and amplification tactics that began in mid-to-late 2018. The initial phase that began in 2016 was marked by the creation of thousands of accounts that were more easily detected as bots or as coordinated activity.

The new activity, however, centers on a refined group of core accounts — the very same accounts that surfaced in the group’s 2018 voter fraud study. Some of the accounts are believed to be highly sophisticated synthetic accounts operated by people attempting to influence conversations, while others are coordinated in some way by actors who have identified real individuals already tweeting out a desired message.

Tens of thousands of other accounts then work in concert to amplify the core group through mentions and retweets to drive what appears, on the surface, to be organic virality.

Operatives with digital firms, political campaigns and other social media monitoring groups also report seeing a recent surge in false narratives or negative memes against 2020 candidates.

A recent analysis from the social media intelligence firm Storyful detected spikes in misinformation activity over social media platforms and online comment boards in the days after each of the 2020 candidates launched their presidential bids, beginning with Warren’s announcement on Dec. 31.

Fringe news websites and social media platforms, Storyful found, played a significant role in spreading anti-Warren sentiment in the days after she announced her candidacy on Dece. 31. Using a variety of keyword searches for mentions of Warren, the firm reported evidence of “spam or bot-like” activity on Facebook and Twitter from some of the top posters.

Kelly Jones, a researcher with Storyful who tracked suspicious activity in the three days after the campaign announcements of Harris, Warren, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), said she’s seen a concerted push over separate online message boards to build false or derogatory narratives.

Among the fringe platforms Storyful identified were 4Chan and 8Chan, where messages appeared calling on commenters to quietly wreak havoc against Warren on social media or in the comments section under news stories.

“Point out that she used to be Republican but switched sides and is a spy for them now. Use this quote out of context: ‘I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets,’” wrote one poster on the 4Chan message board.

“We’re seeing a lot of that rhetoric for nearly each candidate that comes out,” Jones said. “There is a call to action on these fringe sites. The field is going to be so crowded that they say ‘OK: Operation Divide the Left.’”

An official with the Harris campaign said they suspect bad actors pushing misinformation and false narratives about the California Democrat are trying to divide African Americans, or to get the media to pay outsized attention to criticism designed to foster divisions among the Democratic primary electorate.

Researchers and others interviewed for this story say they cannot conclusively point to the actors behind the coordinated activity. It’s unclear if they are rogue hackers, political activists or, as some contend, foreign state actors such as Russia, since it bears the hallmarks of earlier foreign attacks. One of the objectives of the activity, they say, is to divide the left by making the Democratic presidential primary as chaotic and toxic as possible.

Teddy Goff, who served as Obama for America’s digital director, broadly described the ongoing organized efforts as the work of “a hodgepodge. It’s a bit of an unholy alliance.”

“There are state supporters and funders of this stuff. Russia. North Korea is believed to be one, Iran is another,” he said. “In certain cases it appears coordinated, but whether coordinated or not, there are clearly actors attempting to influence the primary by exacerbating divisions within the party, painting more moderate candidates as unpalatable to progressives and more progressive candidates as unpalatable to more mainstream Dems.”

A high-ranking official in the Sanders campaign expressed “serious concerns” about the impact of misinformation on social media, calling it “a type of political cyber warfare that’s clearly having an impact on the democratic process.” The official said the Sanders campaign views the activity it’s already seeing as involving actors that are both foreign and domestic.

Both Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, have reported taking substantial measures since 2016 to identify and block foreign actors and others who violate platform rules.

While Twitter would not specifically respond to questions about the Guardians.ai findings, last year the company reported challenging millions of suspect accounts every month, including those exhibiting “spammy and automated behavior.” After attempts to authenticate the accounts through email or by phone, Twitter suspended 75 percent of the accounts it challenged from January to June 2018.

In January 2019, Twitter published an accounting of efforts to combat foreign interference over political conversations happening on the platform. Earlier efforts included releasing data sets of potential foreign information operations that have appeared on Twitter, which were composed of 3,841 accounts affiliated with the IRA, that originated in Russia, and 770 other accounts that potentially originated in Iran.

“Our investigations are global and ongoing, but the data sets we recently released are ones we’re able to reliably attribute and are disclosing now,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. “We’ll share more information if and when it’s available.”

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Facebook says it has 30,000 people working on safety and security and that it is increasingly blocking and removing fake accounts. The company also says it has brought an unprecedented level of transparency to political advertising on its platform.

At this early stage, the campaigns themselves appear ill-equipped to handle the online onslaught. Their digital operations are directed toward fundraising and organizing while their social media arms are designed to communicate positive messages and information. While some have employed monitoring practices, defensive measures typically take a backseat — especially since so much remains unknown about the sources and the scale of the attacks.

One high-level operative for a top-tier 2020 candidate noted the monumental challenges facing individual campaigns — even the ones with the most sophisticated digital teams. The problem already appears much larger than the resources available to any candidate at the moment, the official said.

Alex Kellner, managing director with Bully Pulpit Interactive, the top digital firm for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, warns that campaigns that don’t have a serious infrastructure set up to combat misinformation and dictate their own online messaging will be the most vulnerable to attack in 2020.

“I think this is going to be a serious part of any successful campaign: monitoring this and working with the platforms to shut down bad behavior,” Kellner said.

Kellner said that even though platforms like Twitter and Facebook have ramped up internal efforts to weed out bad actors, the flow of fake news and misinformation attacks against 2020 candidates is already strong.

“All the infrastructure we’ve seen in 2016 and 2018 is already in full force. And in 2020 it’s only going to get worse,” Kellner said, pointing to negative memes attacking Warren on her claims of Native American heritage and memes surrounding Harris’ relationship with Brown.

The proliferation of fake news, rapidly changing techniques by malicious actors and an underprepared field of Democratic candidates could make for a volatile primary election season.

“Moderates and centrists and Democratic candidates still don’t understand what happened in 2016, and they didn’t realize, like Hillary Clinton, that she wasn’t just running a presidential campaign, she was involved in a global information war,” Horvath said. “Democratic candidates and presidential candidates in the center and on the right who don’t understand that aren’t just going to have a difficult campaign, they’re going to allow their campaign to be an unwitting amplifier of someone else’s attempts to further divide Americans.”

Prominent Democrats have rushed to embrace the "Green New Deal" — and Republicans couldn’t be happier about it.

As liberal groups pressure presidential candidates and lawmakers to back the ambitious climate proposal, Republicans hope their opponents drift so far left that they will be vulnerable in 2020. Since the election of President Donald Trump — who dismisses the link between carbon emissions and rising temperatures — Republicans have steered clear of climate change, but in the Green New Deal they see a chance to pivot the argument back toward economics as growing majorities accept the underlying science.

“I would like them to push it as far as they can. I’d like to see it on the floor. I’d like to see them actually have to vote on it,” Rep. Mike Simpson of R-Idaho, a senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO. “It’s crazy. It’s loony.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s most vocal champions, echoed that sentiment. “Let’s vote on the Green New Deal!” Graham tweeted Friday. “Americans deserve to see what kind of solutions far-left Democrats are offering to deal with climate change."

Trump on Saturday sarcastically called the proposal "Brilliant!" in a tweet.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced their Green New Deal vision on Thursday, with a nonbinding resolution that is just 14 pages long, For comparison, the cap-and-trade bill that passed in 2009 had 1,400 pages. This leaves myriad details to be worked out before Democrats would have actual legislation ready for the House floor.

Still, the resolution is more ambitious than any climate proposal previously floated on Capitol Hill: It calls for a 10-year “national mobilization” to move the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, provide health care for all, increase wages and expand union rights through a massive federal stimulus. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated she has no immediate plans to bring the resolution up for a vote.

Several high-profile presidential candidates have already co-sponsored the resolution, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Republicans bashed the concept as technologically impossible, unimaginably costly and a “socialist fever dream” that they said would cost Democrats moderate seats across the country.

“I think this will be a piñata that Republicans will continue to hit and use to their advantage in the 2020 elections. It’s a policy piñata,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist.

Ocasio-Cortez has said Democrats should not fear the coming GOP attacks.

"We have tried their approach for 40 years. For 40 years we have tried to let the private sector take care of this. They said, ‘We got this, we can do this, the forces of the market are going to force us to innovate,’" she told NPR on Thursday. "Except for the fact that there’s a little thing in economics called externalities. And what that means is that a corporation can dump pollution in the river and they don’t have to pay, but taxpayers have to pay.”

Other Democrats are not giving up on bipartisanship.

“Who knows what they’re cooking up on their side?” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a Green New Deal backer, said. “But I think we have some Republicans that have evolved on this issue and potentially even some partners in moving bipartisan things forward.”

Meanwhile, polls have shown growing acceptance of the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change — even among Republicans. Monmouth University polling from November, for example, found 64 percent of Republicans believe the science, up 15 percentage points from just three years prior. The poll also found 51 percent of GOP voters supported the government doing more to address the causes of climate change.

Conservative Republicans, like Environment Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming, are denouncing it as a "socialist manifesto." More moderate Republicans are avoiding that rhetoric, but say they would prefer more immediate — if incremental — advancements in innovation, boosting clean manufacturing, infrastructure projects and improving soil quality for farmers.

“I think everyone on our side would say that the Green New Deal is a little bit much,” Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, a senior Energy and Commerce Republican, told reporters.

Others see early signs that the progressive faction might paint Pelosi into an unworkable position that could end up costing Democrats seats.

“There’s this new wave of Democrats that make Pelosi look moderate, and I never thought I’d see that day,” said Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s top-ranking Republican. “You see this Green New Deal rollout, you see Medicare for all rollout and you don’t see her buying into those proposals in any great embrace. I think it’s going to be important for the American people to understand the consequences of those proposals.”

Another Republican, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney didn’t discount the climate aims of the Green New Deal, but noted it had “big goals but there’s nothing of substance to figure out how to get there.” He favored technological innovation and a price on carbon to drive down emissions, like the bipartisan carbon fee legislation he’s offered.

George David Banks, a former climate and international energy adviser to Trump, said the Democrats’ proposal should not be dismissed out of hand, praising elements such as calls to address soil health or increase research and development.

“If you’re pretty clear that a significant part of the Green New Deal isn’t based in political reality or economic reality but there is some common ground that would win the support of most Americans, I think that’s fine,” said Banks, who is now executive vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation.

That tenor emerged in the run-up to Ocasio-Cortez and Markey unveiling their plan. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee emphasized the need for research spending, noting they agreed with scientists that greenhouse gases from human activity are warming the planet.

Given that a number of high-profile House Democrats have declined the co-sponsor the Green New Deal, such as Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Climate Crisis Chairwoman Kathy Castor (Fla.), there appears to be enough of a political middle to strike bipartisan deals, said Rich Powell, executive director at ClearPath, who testified at the Energy and Commerce hearing.

“It seems like a lot of folks are tacking toward a more moderate position on this,” said Powell, whose group advocates for research and development in emissions-reduction technology like next-generation nuclear power and carbon capture and for sequestration for coal and natural gas power plants.

The tone differed in the House Natural Resources Committee. Republicans downplayed climate change by pointing to warmer periods during the world’s history. Scientists say combustion of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels and other sources has driven levels of carbon dioxide and average temperatures much higher than they normally would be given the planet’s position and angle relative to the sun.

Industry and conservative groups are ready to give such sentiments backing. Many came out strong against the Green New Deal, demonstrating that Republican allies off the Hill would keep a close eye on how members position themselves.

“The Green New Deal is nothing more than the latest job-killing, socialist wish list from the radical left obsessed with climate change, Medicare-For-All, free college, and a total redistribution of wealth,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement.
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The Democratic digital fundraising platform ActBlue raised $6.9 million on Thursday alone — the party’s biggest day in more than two months and a sign of fresh energy coursing through 2020 campaigns after this week’s debates.

The party’s presidential candidates are only hours away from their next big test, a Sunday fundraising deadline that will show momentum for some candidates and flagging fortunes for others. Fresh off their first debates, Democrats spent the week working furiously to capitalize on the moment, with multiple candidates turning in record or near-best fundraising days as their campaigns barraged supporters with emails and texts asking for cash.

California Sen. Kamala Harris raised more money on Thursday than any other day since her first-week campaign rally in Oakland, spokeswoman Lily Adams said. A campaign aide for Cory Booker said the New Jersey senator brought in more donors Wednesday than on any day except his launch and the last day of the first quarter. And Julián Castro scored a big payday after touting his immigration positions and clashing with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Wednesday, raising three times more money than his previous record day, according to the campaign.

“We have a very short window of time to capitalize on this incredible momentum,” read one fundraising plea sent via text by Castro, who was praised for his debate performance on Wednesday night. “It’s so critical that we seize this moment. We can’t overstate the urgency.”

The fundraising surges highlight the critical role of the debates, especially for lesser-known candidates who need more money and attention to fuel their campaigns. And in this case, the debates give candidates a chance to prove they have momentum again over the next two weeks, as campaigns disclose how much money they raised over the second quarter of the year, which ends Sunday night.

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“A lot of these candidates are struggling to survive,” said Steve Westly, a Democratic fundraiser and former California state controller. “What this really is, is the winnowing down of candidates — to who will be the five or six or eight to continue.”

Well-known candidates who sizzle on the debate stage can also benefit greatly. Harris, who already had drawn a mix of big- and small-dollar donors heading into the debates, won praise from in-demand donors who could help power her bid as she seeks to compete with Biden and the wealthy donors who have flocked to the former vice president since he launched his campaign.

“She had some brilliant moments. And not one. There were three or four really surprising moments,” said Bill Stetson, a Democratic donor who helped raise more than half a million dollars for each of Obama’s presidential campaigns and is undecided on whom he will support in 2020. “I was very, very impressed.”

Stetson, who recently attended a fundraiser for Biden, said he’s never met Harris before. But he said he’ll be looking closely at her candidacy after watching both her debate performance and post-debate interviews. And his phone exploded with texts and tweets from friends after Thursday’s debate, he said.

Donors also heaped praise on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s debate performance. Warren is the only candidate who has explicitly vowed not to hold closed-door fundraisers with wealthy donors during the primary, which has cut her off from direct personal access to the wealthy — though some rich potential supporters said that after this week, they are taking a closer look and may donate anyway.

“I think [Warren is] running a very good campaign. I have considered supporting her,” said San Francisco-based megadonor Susie Tompkins Buell, who said she is not supporting a candidate in the race but cited Warren, Harris and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg as her favorites from the debates. “I think she’s doing very well and I am open to that, I’m just waiting to see how things go in the next few weeks.”

The two weeks after Sunday will mark the second time that candidates have to report their fundraising figures — and the first time that Biden will report his. The fundraising is both a marker of success for a campaign, and a necessity for operating one. And the climate for raising money is ruthlessly competitive.

“Second quarters are always a little harder. Donors are less enthusiastic, there’s less happening, there’s more candidates, it’s hard out there nationally with small donors,” said Connor Farrell, CEO of the digital fundraising firm Left Rising.

Many major donors and fundraisers, meanwhile, remain undecided. Some have contributed to Biden and Buttigieg in recent weeks and expect both of them to announce huge sums raised — but the donors haven’t exclusively pledged their support to either candidate, making it entirely possible someone else could eventually snag their support.

“The bottom line is still, who can beat Trump?” said Alix Ritchie, a Democratic donor. “At the end of the day, that’s the judgment I have to make about who ultimately, I’ll put my shoulder behind the wheel and work like the devil for.”

Ritchie praised Harris’ debate performance — but he said the answer to her “big question” isn’t clear yet. She has donated to all the leading female candidates, plus Biden and Buttigieg, and she will help host a fundraiser for Buttigieg on Cape Cod in July.

Biden is scheduled to be in San Francisco, a Democratic fundraising capital, on Friday and Saturday, where he’s scheduled to attend a trio of events with wealthy supporters.

“He’s got extraordinary support here in Silicon Valley,” said Westly, who is supporting Biden in the race. “You’re going to see strong numbers for [Biden] when the June 30 numbers are in.”

Chris Cadelago and Scott Bland contributed to this report.

Soon after Kathleen Matthews jumped into a crowded Democratic congressional primary in Maryland in 2016, she received an unsolicited check. It was from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s political group, weighing in early on Matthews’ behalf.

Gillibrand’s support for hundreds of female candidates around the country has been a hallmark of her political rise. Now, more than any candidate for president ever has, she’s putting gender at the heart of her pitch to voters — a strategy that could bolster her cause with a sizable slice of the Democratic base and help her stand out in a sprawling primary. But she begins the campaign behind several other prominent women — and men — seeking the same bloc of support, and she will face strong pressure to construct a winning coalition including all stripes of voters.

"Gillibrand is running more clearly than any other candidate to the women’s base," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. "The risk of that strategy is that it has to be more than identity politics to win the presidency. Developing that bloc will be key for her to be competitive in the primary, but she’ll have to also go beyond that before long."

It’s a strategy in line with the moment and Gillibrand’s history: Female voters and a record number of female candidates just powered the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018, fueled by intense opposition to President Donald Trump. But she’s already experienced first-hand a polarizing reaction to her advocacy for women in the Senate, garnering passionate praise and long-lasting criticism when she called for former Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) resignation in 2017, following allegations of sexual misconduct, and said that former President Bill Clinton should have resigned after having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Matthews, who lost her 2016 primary and served as chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party in 2018, said Gillibrand’s activism has given her a powerful starting point.

“Most elected officials are reluctant to support candidates in a contested primary, but Kirsten is not afraid to stick her neck out,” Matthews said. “She’s built a network of women across the country who’ve run for office — winners and losers — who are inspired by her commitment and loyal to her.”

Gillibrand touted positions broadly popular in the Democratic Party in her announcement on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Tuesday night, calling health care a right, not a privilege, and pledging to take on “the corruption and greed in Washington” and “the special interests that write legislation in the dead of night.”

But her opening pitch was biographical: “I’m going to run for president of the United States because as a young mom, I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own,” Gillibrand said.

“Gillibrand has made a career out of advocating for women — sexual assault in the military, equal pay, calling for Franken to resign — so it’s all authentic to her, and I think that will resonate with voters,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. “2018 showed us that women are pissed off and they’re fired up, and that’s a powerful base that Gillibrand can tap into.”

Gillibrand starts at the back of the pack in early polls, and she will face competition from other candidates for support among Democratic women. “There are a lot of candidates who can make a credible pitch” to female voters, said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who served as the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. “I think her strength will be among suburban, white women.”

Indeed, three other high-profile female senators — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar — are likely to run, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced a campaign last weekend. They can all argue that a woman must be on the Democratic ticket.

And women, like any other big voting group, are “not a monolith,” said former Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards. “All of these potential female presidential candidates are going to have to figure out how to appeal to women with their message.”

Edwards, however, noted that she’s another example of Gillibrand’s commitment to women in politics at the expense of the Democratic establishment. Gillibrand was the only sitting senator to endorse Edwards when she ran for Senate in Maryland in 2016, ultimately losing a primary to now-Sen. Chris Van Hollen. Gillibrand has similarly weighed into other crowded primaries to boost women candidates through her leadership PAC, Off the Sidelines.

It wasn’t the first time Gillibrand stuck her neck out in the Senate. Gillibrand fought to reform how the Pentagon and universities handle sexual assault, and she became the first senator to call for Franken’s resignation — a move that alienated some Democrats, particularly in the donor community. Susie Tompkins Buell, a prominent Democratic fundraiser and co-founder of Esprit and North Face clothing brands, told POLITICO that the episode “stained [Gillibrand’s] reputation as a fair player.”

“The Franken thing is going to be a real challenge for Gillibrand,” said Edwards, who hasn’t decided who she will support in the 2020 primary. “It’s not a hurdle she can’t jump over, but she’s going to have to explain it.”

Gillibrand has pushed back against critics, writing on Twitter: “Silencing women for the powerful, or for your friends, or for convenience, is neither acceptable nor just.”

So far, it hasn’t hurt Gillibrand’s fundraising or electoral performance in New York. Gillibrand was one of only three Democratic senators who outperformed the aggregate Democratic House vote in their state in 2018, and she raised more than $27 million during the last election cycle. Much of that campaign cash went toward finding and activating younger supporters online, making Gillibrand less reliant than before on major donors.

Gillibrand’s own political start also serves as a powerful rebuke to Trump, said Democratic operatives. In 2006, Gillibrand defeated three-term GOP Rep. John Sweeney, who was also accused of domestic abuse in a police report. Sweeney’s ex-wife later told the Albany Times-Union that she was “coerced” into making a statement rebutting the report.

“She defeated a guy who was a domestic abuser in a race that nobody thought that she could win,” said Doug Forand, a New York-based Democratic consultant. “That narrative speaks well for someone who wants to take on another alleged abuser of women.”

Gillibrand’s path through the primaries could follow the track many 2018 candidates she supported to took Congress last fall — telling compelling personal stories and largely ignoring Trump on the campaign trail.

“My takeaway from the campaign trail is that there’s a whole lot of women and men who want to see women get elected,” said Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), a first-time candidate in 2018 who received an endorsement from Off the Sidelines. “That momentum for women, overall, is going to continue because this is the new normal.”

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After Sen. Cory Booker appeared on CNN on Wednesday night sounding off on Joe Biden’s recent comments surrounding segregationists, the New Jersey Democrat got a phone call — it was the former vice president.

Biden, however, didn’t apologize for his remarks at a New York fundraiser recalling that “at least there was some civility” when he worked with segregationists in the Senate and that one of those senators “never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”

Nor did he apologize for telling reporters outside a fundraiser on Wednesday that it was Booker, one of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, who needed to apologize.

The two carried on a polite conversation, with the former vice president intent on talking through tensions that had flared in recent days, according to two sources familiar with the call.

But that didn’t happen. Biden’s campaign had sent talking points to surrogates that highlighted the vice president’s work on civil rights and noted that Biden’s opponents had worked with officials who might be considered lightning rods to Democrats, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — a move that further inflamed the situation.

“I find it remarkable that the surrogate talking points they were sending around, as they were trying to contain this, include no mention of the language the vice president used and instead tried to spin that the vice president is being criticized for working with people he disagreed with,” a Booker aide said. “That’s nonsense and speaks volumes to what they know is true, which is, he should be apologizing for what he said.”

On Thursday, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), a Biden campaign co-chairman and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, defended Biden.

“This is really a media issue and it’s an issue that’s going around on social media. But people are not talking about this,” Richmond said. “People want an elected official to get things done. So whether it’s the black caucus working with President Trump last year to get criminal justice done or working with some very unsavory, racist characters back in the day, the goal is to get things done. They are elected and they have a vote, and in order to pass legislation you have to have more votes than not.”

A Biden campaign official confirmed that the call happened but did not comment further.

Booker’s campaign on Thursday was still calling on Biden to take responsibility for his remarks.

“Cory shared directly what he said publicly — including helping Vice President Biden understand why the word ‘boy’ is painful to so many,” said Sabrina Singh, Booker’s campaign spokeswoman. “Cory believes that Vice President Biden should take responsibility for what he said and apologize to those who were hurt.”

The flare-up erupted after Biden, at a fundraiser earlier in the week, reminisced about how he was able to “bring people together” and could even work with the late Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.

“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said, and even imitated the senator’s Southern drawl, according to the pool report that night. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”

Booker took exception with the comments and said as much in a statement early Wednesday.

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“You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’” Booker said. Booker later said on CNN: “Vice President Biden shouldn’t need this lesson.”

CHICAGO — Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said Friday that he made a mistake in supporting the “tough on crime" law that passed 25 years ago and has become a lightning rod for criticism in the Democratic presidential race.

“It was the worst vote I ever gave since being in Congress,” he told a panel of ward committeemen of the Democratic Party of Cook County during a meeting in Chicago for statewide candidates on the 2020 ballot.

“I voted for the war on drugs. I know why I did it,” he said, pointing to concerns in the early 1990s about the increasing use of cocaine, crack and other drugs.

Durbin said that, years later, he came to view his vote as a mistake and now supports legislation to roll back some of the mandatory minimum sentencing set in the law commonly known as the 1994 crime bill. Democratic 2020 presidential front-runner Joe Biden, who was then a senator, helped engineer the law.

The Illinois senator was answering a question from a committeeman, who said Biden should join other Democratic contenders in apologizing for the legislation.

“You’re right,” Durbin said. “You’ve got to be ready to say when you’re wrong. I was wrong on that vote. I’ve tried to make it right. I’ll never make it right for the sacrifices so many people paid,” he said, without referencing Biden.

After his comments to Cook County Democrats, Durbin told POLITICO he wants Democrats to keep their focus on defeating Trump and to avoid the party’s mistakes of 2016.

“We’re just not going to drop the ball this time in any of these states,” he said, referring to criticisms that the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 didn’t focus enough on Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The states were ones Democrats had hoped to win, but all voted for Trump that year.

For 2020, he said, “You’re going to see a very coordinated effort” to get out the vote. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to Iowa, Wisconsin or Indiana over the years, and we’re going to do it again. But this time, I’m talking about more organization. Evanston Township Party (for example) is talking about reaching out to a specific county in Wisconsin, teaming up on a joint effort. I like that. You don’t waste time roaming around being in the wrong place. You have a goal and you reach it.”

Durbin, who is No. 2 in the Senate Democratic leadership after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also dismissed the idea he might be trying to wait out becoming his party’s leader in the chamber.

“I’m where I want to be,” he told POLITICO. “One of the biggest parts of leadership responsibility is raising enormous sums of money. Schumer is very good at that. I welcome him to take on that role. It’s not one that I would jump into. I hope I’m doing a good job as whip and hope to continue.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Sen. Dick Durbin’s seniority in the Senate. He holds the second-highest rank in the Senate Democratic leadership.

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Stephanie Carter, the wife of former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, sought Sunday to “reclaim” a “misleadingly extracted” yet oft-mocked picture of her and Joe Biden that has resurfaced amid accusations that the former vice president acted inappropriately toward a female Nevada state assemblywoman in 2014.

The photograph, taken at the White House in February 2015 during Ash Carter’s swearing-in ceremony to lead the Pentagon, captures Biden standing behind Stephanie Carter and whispering into her ear as his hands rest on her shoulders.

The scene is not dissimilar from the one Lucy Flores alleges took place at a Las Vegas rally five years ago, when she says Biden leaned in to smell her hair and plant an “awkward kiss” on the back of her head. Flores was then Nevada’s Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

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Those claims, made by Flores in an essay published Friday in The Cut, have roiled Biden’s prospective 2020 presidential candidacy and raised new concerns among Democrats regarding his often touchy-feely interactions with voters and government officials across a half-century of public service — evincing fresh doubts about Biden’s political viability in the era of #MeToo.

But in a blog post published Sunday on Medium, Carter wrote that Biden’s display of affection toward her in 2015 was appreciated, as she was “uncharacteristically nervous” after slipping on some ice upon her arrival at the Pentagon earlier in the day.

“After the swearing-in, as Ash was giving remarks, he leaned in to tell me ‘thank you for letting him do this’ and kept his hands on my shoulders as a means of offering his support,” Carter wrote. “But a still shot taken from a video — misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends — sent out in a snarky tweet — came to be the lasting image of that day.”

Carter wrote that she and her husband had previously known Biden and his wife, Jill, “for many years, long before he had become vice president,” and revealed that she expressed her condolences to the couple about the media’s coverage of the incident.

“I told them I felt awful that after he had generously taken time out of his day to swear in an old friend, his attempt to support me had become a joke and even more — supposed proof positive that he didn’t understand how to respect women,” Carter wrote. “I thought it would all blow over if I didn’t dignify it with a response. But clearly that was wishful thinking.”

Carter also wrote that while she does not know Flores, she supports “her right to speak her truth,” adding that Flores and “all women” should be believed.

“But her story is not mine. The Joe Biden in my picture is a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful,” Carter wrote. “So, as the sole owner of my story, it is high time that I reclaim it — from strangers, Twitter, the pundits and the late-night hosts.”

To win a second term in the White House, Donald Trump is running for president of Florida.

Trump will kick off his reelection campaign Tuesday in Orlando, Fla., an event that comes 17 months after his first campaign-style rally as president — in nearby Melbourne. Between those two events, Trump has spent more than 100 days in Florida as president, more than any state outside the Beltway, according to two independent reports.

That only begins to tell the story of Trump’s Florida obsession.

With an eye on reelection during his entire first term, Trump’s politics and policies have a Florida-first bias. He boosted disaster money for the state after Hurricane Michael and approved more money for the Everglades. He courted Hispanic voters there by cracking down on Venezuela and Cuba. He’s tapped big Florida donors, with plans for a Wednesday fundraiser his campaign predicts will haul in another $4 million.

And Trump campaigned relentlessly to make Ron DeSantis governor and Rick Scott senator; their victories mark the first time since Reconstruction the state has had two GOP senators and a Republican governor. Under Trump, the state and national Republican parties are integrated into his campaign, which classifies Florida as an independent region in a nod to its make-or-break importance.

Then there’s the personal factor for Trump. He owns the Mar-a-Lago club and three golf clubs in South Florida, which he frequently visits in the winter months. His campaign manager and chief pollster also live in Florida, and his campaign’s chief spokeswoman grew up in the state, which Trump narrowly carried in 2016.

“For all practical purposes, Florida is the president’s home. It has outsize importance to him personally,” said Susie Wiles, who led Trump’s successful 2016 campaign in Florida and advises his reelection campaign.

But from a political standpoint, Republicans and Democrats in the state know that a GOP candidate is almost guaranteed to lose a presidential race without Florida. The last Republican to win the White House without Florida was Calvin Coolidge in 1924 — long before Florida became the third-most populous state in the nation and the country’s biggest battleground state with 29 Electoral College votes.

“I would call Florida a must-win,” Wiles said. “Yes, it’s mathematically possible to win the presidency without Florida. But it sure is a helluva lot easier if you win here.”

The campaign is under no illusions about how tough Florida is to win.

Aside from Trump’s narrow win, three statewide races went to recount last year, for governor, Senate and agriculture commissioner. The three previous top-of-the-ticket races were decided by about a percentage point. And in 2000, of course, there was George W. Bush.

A leaked internal Trump campaign poll taken in March showed the president was trailing in Florida to former Vice President Joe Biden by 7 percentage points, but the campaign said the survey was taken out of context because it represented a worst-case scenario with high Democratic turnout. The campaign’s polling also shows the unpopular president is struggling in the Rust Belt. Over the weekend, the campaign parted ways with some of its pollsters, but not chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, a Florida resident.

The campaign plans to use Florida as a proving ground for a Latino outreach initiative, hoping to replicate the statewide 2018 midterms when Democrats failed to turn out this liberal-leaning segment of the electorate.

“Florida is a unique state for a lot of reasons, and the varied Latino population is one of them. It is the perfect place to soon be launching our Latino coalition,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said. “The Latino community is not monolithic in Florida, just like in the rest of the country, and we will have people from these diverse communities speaking to their friends and neighbors on the president’s behalf.”

Parscale has also pitched in on the ground. A new Florida resident, he’s paid visits to the Seminole County Republicans in Central Florida, Broward County’s GOP in South Florida and the Miami Young Republicans, who have begun a voter-outreach program focusing on Hispanics.

However, Florida has the nation’s largest Puerto Rican population: They make up about a third of the state’s Hispanic voters, which in turn accounts for about 16 percent of the state’s registered voters. Poll after poll shows Trump’s numbers with this segment of the electorate are poor. Trump’s strong standing with Republican-leaning Cuban Americans, though, helps counteract the antipathy in the Puerto Rican community.

Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said the campaign has launched a Spanish-language radio program to counter the Trump campaign’s outreach to the state’s growing Venezuelan population. He said Venezuelans dislike the president’s refusal to grant temporary protected status to immigrants from the South American country as its economy crumbles under the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.

“Trump is paying lip service to the Venezuelan community,” Peñalosa said.

With Florida so crucial to Trump, Florida Democrats are agitating to have more national party money pumped into the state. Democrats hope to register 200,000 new voters this year. And former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have announced separate plans to help register and turn out voters as well.

Liberal activists plan to bring a giant inflatable “Baby Trump” balloon to Tuesday’s rally in Orlando, mocking the president’s temperament.

But Democrats are sure to be outnumbered by Republicans on Tuesday in Orlando, where the president’s support in the suburban areas of the media market is significant.

Typically, a campaign carries Florida by turning out its base and winning, however narrowly, its geographic and ideological center that runs from Tampa, through Orlando and into Daytona Beach along Interstate 4. As goes the I-4 corridor, so goes the state and, often in presidential elections, the White House.

The campaign settled on Orlando for its ceremonial launch because of its location. In the center of the peninsula, it is relatively easy to get to from most parts of the state — a crucial factor for a campaign that’s built around large and enthusiastic crowds. Some people began lining up 42 hours before the doors opened. The disabled and elderly were worried they couldn’t get in.

Because of the rain and heat, Trump’s rally will be held indoors at the city’s Amway Center, named after the marketing company owned by the family of Trump’s Education secretary, Betsy DeVos. The venue seats about 20,000, but the president claimed on Twitter that more than 100,000 had inquired. To handle the crowds, the campaign announced it’s holding “45 Fest,” providing food trucks, a live band named The Guzzlers and large screens hauled by trucks so those who don’t make it inside can still watch the speech.

Trump is pairing the Orlando trip with two fundraisers, one at the Amway Center and another at his golf club in the Miami suburb of Doral, where admission is as much as $250,000 for elite donors who get special access to the president. As if any reminder of the state’s political importance was needed, Democrats will hold their first presidential debates in the state next week.

“We’re capitalizing on this enthusiasm,” Alex Garcia, the Trump campaign’s Florida manager, said. “We’re going to focus this enthusiasm on making sure we register as many voters as possible and we touch as many voters as we can.”
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NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who defeated his opponents in 2013 by emphasizing income inequality, is hoping for a similar come-from-behind victory as he enters the crowded Democratic field for president.

De Blasio announced his candidacy through an online video Thursday morning, followed by an anticipated live appearance on Good Morning America in Times Square alongside his wife, Chirlane McCray.

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“Working Americans deserve better and I know we can do it because I’ve done it here in the largest, toughest city in this country,” de Blasio said during the interview. “We have to put working people first.”

In the appearance, he coined President Donald Trump “Con Don,” using the president’s tactic of assigning his opponents pejorative nicknames as he works to position himself as the best candidate to best the president.

De Blasio, who for months publicly weighed whether to enter the race, is the 23rd Democrat to join the race and faces an uphill battle: He is late to enter the field, while other candidates have pulled in millions of dollars, gotten reams of national air time and defined their places in the race.

De Blasio’s bid got off to a rough start in his home city.

As he spoke, protesters opposing his bid gathered outside the studio. “We’re trying to help the nation because if you can’t run this city, there’s no way you can run this country,” said Joe Rao, a Long Islander with the police officers’ rank-and-file union that has long been at odds with de Blasio.

And as the mayor touted an emissions reduction bill inside Trump Tower on Monday, he was silenced by opponents who rode the escalator with signs reading “Worst Mayor Ever.”

Later de Blasio is heading to key voting states — first Iowa, where he will address the Truman Club in Sioux City on Friday, then South Carolina for the weekend.

Though he‘s won every election he’s entered, recent polls have shown New Yorkers do not support his bid for the White House.

And, unlike other candidates, he has an around-the-clock executive job that could prove a liability if he is out of town during any type of crisis.

This week, for instance, a departmental trial began for a police officer’s role in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man — an incident that underscored the racial tensions in law enforcement in New York City.

The mayor also missed another extension to name a chairperson to lead the city’s public housing authority, which became so problematic on his watch it is now under the auspices of a federal monitor.

On Monday, a former de Blasio fundraiser was sentenced to four years in jail for his role in a bribery scheme involving the police department.

But de Blasio sees his job as an asset in that it has given him a unique experience that no one else in the race can claim and provided a platform for him to implement his progressive ideas.

“It doesn’t matter if you live in a city or a rural area, a big state, a small state, it doesn’t matter what your ethnicity is — people in every part of this country feel stuck, or even like they’re going backwards. But the rich got richer,” de Blasio says in the three-minute online video.

The spot begins with snippets of interviews with de Blasio as he zips through the bustling city chauffeured in the backseat of a car, and sits in the official mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion discussing his record in New York City. He boasts of supporting a state increase in the minimum wage, ensuring city-funded pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, signing into law a bill expanding paid sick day requirements for workers.

“There’s plenty of money in this world; there’s plenty of money in this country — it’s just in the wrong hands,” he says in the opening, repeating a line he has used throughout the past few months as he gears up for this campaign.

He and his wife, Chirlane McCray, speak of the need for health care that is “available to all,” including mental health — McCray’s signature initiative that has been beset by financial and accountability problems.

McCray is black and de Blasio’s biracial family played a pivotal role in his 2013 election, highlighted by his son Dante’s afro.

He then pivots to discussing Trump and promises to “take him on.”

“I’m a New Yorker. I’ve known Trump’s a bully for a long time. This is not news to me or anyone else here. And I know how to take him on,” de Blasio continued.

He spoke about the president’s border policy, showing photos of children being separated from parents at the country’s southern border, and images of hurricane flooding.

Whether de Blasio will even qualify for debates or can raise adequate money is unclear: He has only certainly reached 1 percent in two polls, one percentage point shy of the number needed to get on the debate stage. His campaign team believes that a reading of a third poll may end up securing him a spot, spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said.

She also said that money he has been raising since last year for his federal Fairness PAC will not be transferred to a presidential account he plans to file paperwork to open Thursday.

—Samantha Maldonado and Caitlin Oprysko contributed to this report.