With Super Tuesday just six days away, moderates in the Democratic presidential primary are setting their eyes on North Carolina as a key state to lure voters to the middle.
Former vice president Joe Biden, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg will be bringing their campaigns to Raleigh in the coming days.
Meanwhile, tensions have boiled over between the remaining presidential candidates on debate stages in Las Vegas and Charleston, as the Democratic Party’s moderates clash with frontrunner Senator Bernie Sanders’ “radical” democratic socialist agenda of Medicare for all and a Green New Deal and billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s attempt literally to purchase the election. There’s been yelling, finger-pointing, soapboxing, and menacingly-direct eye-contact with the camera from Pete Buttigieg: None of it has been good.
In the polls, Biden narrow leads a “tight three-way contest” in North Carolina with Sanders and Bloomberg, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday. Of potential voters polled, 23 percent favored Biden, 20 percent liked Sanders and 17 percent back Bloomberg. Senator Elizabeth Warren trailed with 11 percent, followed by Klobuchar and Buttigieg in the single digits.
Biden can thank African Americans and seniors for his lead, the poll shows, while younger voters largely gravitate towards Sanders.
Klobuchar and her can-do Minnesota grit will swing by Raleigh on Thursday for a “grassroots event,” at 12:30 p.m. at The Fairview. Sign up to go here.
On Saturday, Biden is holding an event at Raleigh’s historically black St. Augustine’s University. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. You can RVSP for the event here.
Buttigieg will arrive on Sunday morning. In typical millennial fashion, the location of the rally is yet to be announced.
Contact Raleigh News Editor Leigh Tauss at ltauss@indyweek.com.
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