Piling up wins on Super Tuesday, Trump and Biden move closer to rematch

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump romped through the opening contests of Super Tuesday, piling up wins in states including Texas, the second-largest delegate prize of the night, as they moved inexorably toward their parties’ nominations and a rematch for the White House in November.

Trump’s primary rival, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, secured Vermont, according to the Associated Press, depriving Trump of a clean sweep.

Even with that lone defeat, Trump took a giant step toward the nomination Tuesday night, winning 11 other states before 11 p.m. Eastern time. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, the former president made no mention of Haley, instead calling for “unity.”

“We want to have unity,” he declared, “and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly.”

On the Democratic side, Biden had won overwhelmingly in every state called by the Associated Press on his way to an expected sweep. His one stumble came in American Samoa, a tiny American territory in the Pacific Ocean, where a little-known Democratic businessman, Jason Palmer, bested the president.

Biden also looked toward the general election, declaring in a statement: “My message to the country is this: Every generation of Americans will face a moment when it has to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights. To every Democrat, Republican and independent who believes in a free and fair America: This is our moment. This is our fight. Together, we will win.”

As polls began closing, Super Tuesday quickly shaped up to be a major disappointment for Haley. After winning the Republican primary in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, she was hoping the northern Virginia suburbs would mirror the city across the Potomac River and deliver the state of Virginia to her. They did not. After that, one state after another slipped from her grasp.

The contests Tuesday night will all but determine the presidential candidates for the November election and shape Congress and statehouses for next year and beyond.

Biden faced only nominal opposition – although in Minnesota, Palestinian rights advocates were hoping votes for “uncommitted” would embarrass the president and raise pressure on him to shift his pro-Israel policies as the war in the Gaza Strip grinds on.

“He’s going too easy on (Israel prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” said Mark Suchy, 76, of Minneapolis, who had voted “uncommitted” on Tuesday. “He needs to cut the military funding.”

Democrats have worried that such feelings could depress turnout among the party’s voters in November, but Suchy called himself a “strong Biden supporter” and said he planned to vote for him on Election Day.

For Haley, the Super Tuesday results will mean still more calls for her to end her unlikely campaign for the presidency. She was back in the Charleston, South Carolina, area Tuesday after a national campaign swing, with no public events planned. Describing her team as “a bunch of happy warriors today,” a spokesperson for her campaign said they had been working to get out the vote, without offering specifics: “playing music and having fun.”

For months now, and with increasingly urgent language, Haley, who was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, has tried to paint her former boss as an aging, mentally unsound agent of chaos, unable to respect veterans or service members and unwilling to be faithful to the Constitution. But though her campaign has exposed cracks in Republican Party unity, she has not loosened his grip on the Republican electorate.

“We want someone that’s decisive, someone that understands the issues – especially with the border, it seems that Trump does understand – and wants what’s best for all of us,” said Ramiro Lopez, 36, of McAllen, Texas, who voted for Trump on Tuesday.

Haley will have to decide whether to soldier on with financial resources that are likely to dwindle, leave the race and endorse Trump, or leave the race and withhold her endorsement for now. The centrist group No Labels has made it clear it would like Haley to agree to serve on a “unity ticket” that the group’s leaders are still pondering. But she has said she will not.

Voters were also deciding on the contestants for other important elections that will shape Congress and state capitals next year and beyond.

In North Carolina, the same Republican voters who sided with Trump selected Mark Robinson, the state’s conservative lieutenant governor, who has a history of offensive and polarizing comments, to run for the governorship in November. Democrats in North Carolina selected the state attorney general, Josh Stein, to run against Robinson in a contest to succeed North Carolina’s term-limited Democratic governor, Roy Cooper.

In California, some of the most watched races of the night may not be resolved until Wednesday. The marquee race is for the Senate seat held until last year by Dianne Feinstein, who died at 90 in September. The contest attracted three Democratic heavy hitters, all from the state’s House delegation: Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.

For much of the campaign, it looked as if the top two finalists would be Democrats, Schiff and Porter. Then came the rise of a celebrity Republican, the former Los Angeles Dodgers great Steve Garvey. He did not do much campaigning, but Schiff, figuring that in a Democratic state like California a Republican would be easier to beat in November, spent $10 million on ads that ostensibly attacked Garvey as “too conservative for California,” but intentionally elevated his candidacy.

Voters will decide if the effort worked, or whether Porter can eke out a second-place finish to challenge Schiff in November. Under California’s so-called jungle primary system, all candidates compete in the same primary, regardless of party, and the top two vote-getters face off in November.

California also had the most consequential House primary of Super Tuesday, thanks again to its top-two-finishers primary system. Democrats dearly want to take the Central Valley district that runs from Bakersfield to Fresno from the Republican incumbent, David Valadao. The newly drawn district would have favored Biden by 13 percentage points in 2020.

But before they had a chance to try to win it, Democrats had to contend with each other. The party’s chosen candidate, a former assemblyman named Rudy Salas, was facing a spirited Democratic opponent in Melissa Hurtado, whose state Senate seat mirrors the U.S. House district. Both want to be the Central Valley’s first Mexican American representative, but if Democratic turnout is low and divided, Valadao could end up facing his Republican challenger, Chris Mathys, in November.

In Texas, the down-ballot races highlighted Republican-on-Republican rivalries, driven by the state’s polarizing attorney general, Ken Paxton, who was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on charges stemming from accusations that he had abused his office, for the benefit of himself and an Austin real estate investor and campaign donor. The state Senate acquitted Paxton.

Paxton was backing several conservative candidates in Republican legislative primaries, in an attempt to unseat Republicans who had voted for his impeachment. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was also hoping Republican primary challengers could unseat opponents of his plan to use public funds to help families pay for private and religious schools.

In the state’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas-area congressman who defeated an incumbent Republican to gain his seat in 2018, held a large lead over state Sen. Roland Gutierrez with half the votes counted. The winner will challenge Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, in November.