Kamala Harris's plan to crush 2020 rivals on her home turf [View all]

[DonViejo]

Analysis: The California senator's early moves in her home state reveal a strategy that relies on her edge there, her perceived demographic advantage in the South and a primary calendar that brings them together on March 3, 2020.

Feb. 24, 2019, 5:55 AM EST
By Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON — As she moves swiftly to build a juggernaut in her home state, California Sen. Kamala Harris is revealing what looks like an audacious strategy for delivering a mortal blow to her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination next March.

It relies on her geographical edge at home, her perceived demographic advantage in the South and a primary calendar that brings them together on March 3 — known as "Super Tuesday" because it is the date on which the most delegates to the party's convention are in play in primaries across the country.

California voters alone will send more than 400 delegates to the convention, nearly double second-ranking Texas, and Harris, who is one of two African-American candidates in the race, is likely to have a shot at consolidating the black electorates in Southern states voting on Super Tuesday, including Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.

In 2008 and 2016, respectively, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fueled their nominations with massive delegate hauls in heavily African-American Southern states where black voters formed a bloc behind the winning candidate. Harris would like to repeat those feats — a bigger challenge, for sure, in a multi-candidate race that also features Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is black.

But for Harris, the real key is to make California — where it is notoriously expensive and difficult to organize statewide campaigns — a maelstrom of wasted time and money for everyone else. And while she's been making the rounds of early states with the other Democrats, her campaign has begun the work of standing up an operation back home.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/kamala-harris-s-plan-crush-2020-rivals-her-home-turf-n974051?cid=public-rss_20190224