Who Could Breach Joe Biden’s ‘Firewall’ in South Carolina?

One of the bedrock certainties of the run-up to the early-state phase of the 2020 Democratic nominating contest has been Joe Biden’s grip on the South Carolina primary, to be held on February 29, the last battle before Super Tuesday on March 3. The former veep has led in all 22 polls of the Palmetto State in the RealClearPolitics database, mostly because of his strength among African-American voters, who are expected to represent a solid majority of the primary electorate there.

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But even before the Iowa debacle, other candidates were gnawing away at Biden’s lead in South Carolina. One of them, Tom Steyer, was concentrating his vast resources on the state and focusing on the very voters on whom Biden depends, as the New York Times reported recently:

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Mr. Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire from California, is tapping into his vast wealth to lavish money on black businesses, hire dozens of African-American staff members, and spend generously with black-owned news organizations.

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As of late January, Steyer had spent $14 million on broadcast-TV ads in the state and was putting an estimated $200,000 a week into Facebook ads targeting South Carolinians, along with millions of dollars worth of direct mail. The billionaire has also held more events in the state than Biden or anyone else still in the race. {snip} he’s catching up with the local front-runner among African-Americans, with 24 percent in that demographic as opposed to 30 percent for Biden and only 16 percent for Sanders and 10 percent for Elizabeth Warren. {snip}

But Steyer isn’t the only political vulture circling Biden’s suddenly ripe carcass: A candidate who is barely a blip on the national political screen, Deval Patrick, has begun refocusing his late-starting campaign from New Hampshire to South Carolina, as Politico reports:

Joe Biden called his fourth-place finish in Iowa a “gut punch” here on Wednesday. For Deval Patrick, it just might be an opportunity …

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A pro-Patrick super-PAC, Reason to Believe, has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into South Carolina media markets in recent weeks, with an emphasis on black radio …

Reason to Believe has reserved well over $600,000 in airtime in South Carolina — $253,000 in Charleston, $246,000 in Columbia and $186,000 in Greenville, and more cash is on the way.

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