Elizabeth Warren’s campaign chief is trying to manage expectations as his candidate’s presidential bid stalls in the polls.
Roger Lau, in a memo released Friday, touted the team’s 3 millionth “grassroots contribution,” donations that have funded the Massachusetts senator’s visits to 30 states and Puerto Rico.
They have also allowed her to build out a staff of more than 1,000 people across the country, opening more than 100 field offices to help promote her message and get out the vote “as the primary moves towards the convention in July,” according to Lau.
“We expect this to be a long nomination fight and have built our campaign to sustain well past Super Tuesday and stay resilient no matter what breathless media narratives come when voting begins,” he wrote.
Lau additionally alluded to Warren’s plan for the general election, including advocating for the repeal of the Electoral College.
“For instance, after the very first contest, we will keep staff on the ground and offices open in Iowa,” he wrote.
Lau’s note, released less than two weeks before Iowa’s opening caucuses on Feb. 3, foreshadows the expectation Warren, 70, won’t win the most delegates in the contest. The senator’s organizational efforts in the state were lauded earlier in the cycle, but her ground game hasn’t stopped her sliding in state-based polls.
Warren, on average, has 16.7% of the vote in Iowa, which puts her behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s 21% and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 17.3%, according to RealClearPolitics data. Buttigieg trails her with 16.3% support, rounding out the top four contenders in the Democratic race for the White House.
