NEW LONDON, N.H. — With Kamala Harris dropping out of the 2020 presidential contest, Andrew Yang arguably became the top candidate of the second tier in the Democratic primary as he spoke to an audience at Colby-Sawyer College. Yang didn’t dance on Harris’s grave.
“I think most people underestimate the human element of running for president,” Yang said. “I’ve been with Kamala dozens of times now on the trail. I consider her a friend. We have each other’s cell phone numbers and text occasionally, and it makes me very sad to see her drop out. You know, she has a lot to offer the country. It’s more human than people think. I’m going to miss seeing her a great deal.”
Yang wouldn’t commit to considering Harris as his running mate, but he did note that he “would 100% love to work with Kamala in some capacity” if elected.
“We have a lot of problems to solve in this country, and she’s going to be a part of the solution,” he said.
“We are one of the only campaigns in the field that has been growing consistently,” Yang said. “We are hiring and expanding as other teams are contracting, and if you look at our numbers, we raised $10 million in the third quarter, which is more than three times what we raised the previous quarter. And this quarter, we’re growing still. Voters sense the energy around the campaign. The crowds are bigger, the enthusiasm is higher. We’re going to continue to grow and grow and peak at the right time.”
Both Yang and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ranks lower than Yang in national polling but is surging in New Hampshire, require just one more poll to make it to the December debate stage. Yang already has 100,000 donors more than the 200,000 donor count requirement, but billionaire Tom Steyer, who long had the polling necessary, didn’t meet the donor mark until Tuesday morning, qualifying him for the December debate.
“You can’t buy passion. If you have to put people against money, I’ll take people every time, particularly when you’re talking about elections,” Yang said of Steyer and fellow billionaire and candidate Michael Bloomberg. “I think that the folks who are self-funding are gonna find that their money’s like pushing on a string after a while, where you put more money into more ads and then the impact diminishes, whereas in our case, the more people get excited about a new way forward and our vision for the country then the more we grow. So then the dynamics are going to work to our favor, and history’s proven this. I think that history is going to repeat itself in terms of some of the people who are putting their own money into their candidacies.”
