CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The Latest on the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest (all times local):
10 p.m.
Elizabeth Warren is back in Texas ahead of Super Tuesday and telling supporters that it was she -- and not Bernie Sanders -- who got results after the 2008 financial crash.
The Massachusetts senator on Thursday told a crowd in San Antonio that Democrats “can’t have a nominee who has great ideas but no record for getting anything done.” Warren said she and Sanders agree on many ideas, including a desire to rein in Wall Street a decade ago.
But she said it was she who delivered by pushing to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency that she considers the highlight of her career.
It was Warren’s fifth trip to Texas, and she’s scheduled to return to Houston this weekend. At stake in Texas on Tuesday is the second biggest haul of delegates behind California.
Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro warmed up the crowd for Warren. Castro, who endorsed Warren after ending his own presidential bid, is also hitting the road for her across Texas this weekend.
___
7:35 p.m.
A voter has asked Joe Biden in South Carolina about trips to South Africa he’s recalled in recent weeks on the presidential campaign trail, with some controversy over his recollections.
On Thursday, however, Biden did not claim that he was arrested trying to see the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, a prisoner during apartheid and later the first post-apartheid black president of South Africa.
Biden has introduced the supposed “arrest” multiple times recently as he’s campaigned, despite never having mentioned it in his memoirs or producing any record of it.
At least one other official involved in his trips, former Ambassador Andrew Young, has said publicly that he doesn’t know what the former vice president might have been referencing.
Biden campaign aides said after Tuesday night’s debate that Biden was referring to being “separated” for a period of time from some others in a U.S. delegation.
In Conway, Biden stuck to praising Mandela for healing his country rather than emerging from prison embittered.
___
7:05 p.m.
Joe Biden told more than 600 people gathered at Coastal Carolina University that unifying the U.S. electorate will be the next president’s biggest challenge but most necessary job. His unspoken subtext: Bernie Sanders can’t do it.
“This nation isn’t looking for a revolution. It’s looking for results,” the former vice president said Thursday in South Carolina. Later, Biden added, “Democracies require consensus. Otherwise, it’s just an abuse of power by a president, Democrat or Republican.”
Biden didn’t mention his Democratic rival Sanders by name. The Vermont senator’s call for a “political revolution” fueled his insurgent-but-unsuccessful 2016 bid for the nomination and now has him as the 2020 front-runner after three contests. Biden is looking to win in South Carolina to cap Sanders’ rise and make the nominating fight a legitimate two-man race.
Biden is widely viewed as the favorite in South Carolina based on his strength with African American voters. Actress Vivica Fox introduced Biden in Conway, stressing Biden’s loyalty to former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president.
“He had Obama’s back for eight years. Eight years,” Fox said. “Those two men worked hard to get our country back on track.”
___
3:20 p.m.
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg will be spending Tuesday night in Florida, a state that won’t hold its primary for another two weeks.
The upcoming Tuesday election, called Super Tuesday, is the first time Bloomberg will be on ballots. Fourteen states, including delegate-rich California and Texas, will vote that day.
Bloomberg’s decision to spend the evening in Florida shows he’s confident his campaign will continue regardless of Tuesday’s results. His campaign views Florida as a battleground state in the general election and believe Bloomberg is poised to do well in such states with his anti-Trump message.
Florida’s primary will be held March 17.
___
3:15 p.m.
Mike Bloomberg’s Democratic presidential campaign has released more information about his heart health and urged his rival Bernie Sanders to do the same.
A letter signed by Bloomberg’s doctor says he underwent cardiac stress testing and an echocardiogram in July. It shows normal function of his left ventricular, “excellent exercise capacity,” and a left ventricular ejection fraction of 60 to 65%, which is in the normal range. The letter notes that Bloomberg had a stent placed for a blocked coronary artery in 2000.
There are several ways to measure heart health, but the size and function of the left ventricle, its main pumping chamber, is one key. This report says that Bloomberg’s left ventricle is healthy. It’s not enlarged, and the ejection fraction – the amount of blood it pumps out with each heartbeat – is right in the middle of the normal range.
Bloomberg had previously disclosed he has atrial fibrillation, an irregular or rapid heartbeat.
It’s the campaign’s latest attempt to draw a contrast with Sanders, whose health has been under scrutiny since he suffered a heart attack in October. Both men are 78.
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser says Sanders should release the same data.
___
3 p.m.
Elizabeth Warren wants to create a special adviser to the president on border communities who will head a new agency to promote prosperity in the region.
The Massachusetts senator, like other Democratic presidential candidates, has already released proposals to soften the Trump administration’s tough immigration policies.
But in a new plan unveiled Wednesday, Warren pledges to focus on more deeply improving the lives of people living along the U.S.-Mexico border. She’s promising to end the Trump administration’s deployment of military forces to the border and redirect funding for the border wall to combating the new coronavirus.
Warren is also promising to crack down on vigilante groups guarding the border, create a Border Health initiative within the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy and pardon anyone convicted of providing food and water to immigrants -- even though such convictions are rare.
___
2:40 p.m.
South Carolina’s first new Democratic congressman in decades is inviting President Donald Trump to tour his district while he’s in town, in hopes of helping him understand why there is “such united opposition” to offshore drilling in the area.
In a letter sent Thursday to the president, Rep. Joe Cunningham noted the natural beauty of the coastal area, around which the state’s more than $22 billion tourism industry is focused.
Cunningham’s upset victory in 2018 came after a campaign in which he focused intently on opposing Trump’s plans to do seismic airgun blasts and offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast.
There has been bipartisan opposition to drilling in South Carolina, including from one of Trump’s top allies in the state, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster.
Trump is planning to hold a rally in North Charleston on Friday night, just hours before Democrats in the state hold their presidential primary on Saturday.
___
1:15 p.m.
Two days before the South Carolina primary, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” single-payer insurance proposal “a long, expensive slog” with little chance of passage.
Speaking Thursday at a small-town community health center in McClellanville, South Carolina, Biden countered with his “public option” government insurance plan to compete in the existing private market. “The most important thing, I can actually get it passed,” Biden said.
The former vice president also emphasized that his plan could benefit Americans who missed out on Medicaid expansion after the 2010 Affordable Care Act because of their Republican governors.
Biden said his public option would “automatically enroll” about 200,000 residents who would have been eligible for an expanded Medicaid insurance program under the “Obamacare” law. But more than a dozen Republican-run states declined to expand Medicaid after the Supreme Court ruled that they couldn’t be forced to do so.
Under what he called “Bidencare,” the former vice president said, “the state couldn’t do anything about it.”
South Carolina is the last of the four early nominating contests, but it’s the first of the group that has not expanded Medicaid under the 2010 law. Several states with March 3 “Super Tuesday” primaries also have not expanded Medicaid, including Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.
___
12:45 p.m.
Former New York City Mike Bloomberg says he has the record and resources to flip Texas in the presidential election.
Speaking Thursday at a rally in Houston, Bloomberg argued that Democrats can win Texas if they nominate someone who can build a broad coalition that includes independent and moderate Republican voters. The last Democrat to win Texas in a presidential race was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Bloomberg noted that former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, lost a close race in 2018 for the U.S. Senate against Republican Ted Cruz. O’Rourke then ran for president before dropping out last year. Bloomberg said, “My friend Beto showed that we’re getting close.”
Bloomberg appeared in Texas as part of a trip through states that have their primaries next week on Super Tuesday.
___
10:35 a.m.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is launching a multi-million dollar television and digital advertising campaign in 12 of the 14 states holding primary elections on Tuesday, March 3.
The announcement comes on the heels of a strategy memo released by Buttigieg’s campaign manager describing the possible but tricky path to the nomination the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor faces.
Buttigieg, meanwhile, is campaigning in South Carolina, where his appeal among African American voters who make up the majority of the electorate in Saturday’s primary will be tested.
The memo from campaign manager Mike Schmuhl said Buttigieg has a path to the nomination, in part, if he holds down front-runner Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ winning margins on March 3.
Buttigieg’s television and on-line ad buy opens today in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.
Buttigieg has faced fundraising pressure, having spent twice what he raised in January en route to top-two finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has been asking supporters to help him reach $13 million ahead of Super Tuesday.
___
9:55 a.m.
The American Civil Liberties Union says it’s dispatching dozens of trained volunteers across South Carolina to monitor voting precincts during Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary.
The group said Thursday the 73 volunteers will report and address any problems with the help of legal advocates. They’ll be at precincts in Berkeley, Charleston, Dorchester and Lexington counties as voters go to the polls.
The ACLU says anyone who sees any issues should report them to a voter protection hotline. Polls in South Carolina are open on Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Biden has long led in polling in South Carolina. But Biden’s lead has tightened in recent months, in part because of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ momentum after success in other early state contests. And California billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions of dollars on ads in the state.
___
Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”