2020 Daily Trail Markers: And then there were 20...
Kirsten Gillibrand ends presidential campaign
And then there were 20...
Kirsten Gillibrand quit the presidential race Wednesday. The two-term female senator and former congresswoman from a purple New York district lasted five months in the 2020 Democratic primary, notes CBS News campaign reporter Cara Korte. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who positioned herself as a champion of reproductive rights and working families, ended her campaign for president today. She struggled to break through in polling or on the debate stage — even as some of her signature platforms found the spotlight this summer — including her 9/11 First Responders bill and advocacy for abortion rights.
She is the first of seven senators running in the Democratic field to drop out. Gillibrand has said she'll endorse, and she has warm relationships with Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, in particular. Will her eventual endorsement carry any weight? Or does Gillibrand, a Clinton-anointed public servant who campaigned on winning over red, purple, and blue areas, represent the kind of moderate Democrat that voters are glad to see clearing the path for others?
Cara appeared tonight on CBSN's Daily Trail Markers segment.
FROM THE CANDIDATES
KAMALA HARRIS
CBS News campaign reporter Adam Brewster reports Harris' team is launching a new digital ad highlighting her recent five-day bus tour across Iowa. (Read Adam's story here)
The spot features clips of Harris speaking to crowds at campaign stops across the state highlighting issues like teacher pay and her conversations with Iowans at the Iowa State Fair, a Baptist church, a farm and a mobile home community.
"This campaign is about all of us. It is so much bigger than me. I cannot do this without you," Harris says at the conclusion of the ad, which will run on Facebook and YouTube. The Harris campaign says this is part of a six-figure digital and television advertising blitz in Iowa. Data from the media firm Advertising Analytics show Harris' campaign has spent and booked about $450,000 on broadcast and cable television advertising in Iowa from August 8 through the week of September 3.
Also on Wednesday, Harris slammed President Trump for comments he tweeted about Puerto Rico. The island is bracing for landfall of Hurricane Dorian as its residents are still fighting to recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
"I don't know, it's just something missing. He lacks the ability to have empathy, or sympathy, or concern...And this president is lacking in the ability to lead," said Harris at a Wednesday Nevada union event. CBS News campaign reporter Stephanie Ramirez says the senator referred to Mr. Trump as a "lawless president" and alluded to a Washington Post report asserting the president told officials he'd pardon them if they have to break laws to get 500 miles of his long-sought border wall built by Election Day.
JOE BIDEN
A wealthy private citizen named Shirley Shawe has purchased $500,000 in ad time in early-voting states to slam Joe Biden over a business dispute that negatively affected her son's company years ago, CBS News campaign reporters Bo Erickson and Zak Hudak report. The ad, which has little to do with 2020 issues, instead focuses on a bit of business arcana, the Delaware Chancery Court system, which was formed to adjudicate business disputes involving Delaware-based corporations.
"The Delaware court is too male, too white and anything but open," the ad's narrator says of court system.
The ad, shown here, bashes the Chancery Court and ties Biden to them, highlighting snippets of a 14-minute exchange in a 2005 Senate hearing between then-Senator Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, who was a Harvard law professor at the time. Shawe's ad accuses Biden of corruptly defending the system as Warren attacks it.
Here's Bo's and Zak's story.
GOVERNOR'S MANSION
MAKING IT OFFICIAL
After three weeks of campaigning and $1.9 million spent on advertisement and operations, Tate Reeves is now officially Mississippi's Republican nominee for governor. The lieutenant governor won in Tuesday's Republican runoff with 54.3 percent of the vote against former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr.
Reeves will face Democratic candidate Jim Hood – the state's attorney general – on November 5. In a poll released by Hood's campaign and conducted by Democratic pollster firm Hickman Analytics Inc., Hood leads by 1 to 3 points over Reeves among likely voters.
The poll also said 75 percent of the 600 likely voters surveyed support expanding Medicaid, which was one of the issues at the forefront of Waller's campaign. Hood has made health care a central part of his campaign and on Wednesday, he toured medical facilities in Jackson, Mississippi, a city where three of the four neighboring state counties voted for Waller.
A Republican strategist familiar with the race told CBS News Political Unit broadcast associate Aaron Navarro that while the state's hospital associations usually support Democrats, "the Republicans Waller got will stick" to voting red in November, regardless of Hood's focus on health care.
