We still don’t have any official results from Iowa’s Democratic caucus on Monday, but that didn’t stop Pete Buttigieg from claiming victory.
“So, we don’t know all the results,” Buttigieg admitted at a rally in Des Moines. “But, we know, by the time it is all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation. Because, by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”
Internal numbers from both the Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders camps suggest that Buttigieg did indeed perform well. But the Vermont senator’s camp insists that Sanders came out on top, while Buttigieg has already touted an upset. Either way, this was a good night for Buttigieg. All he needed to do to solidify his campaign’s political momentum was beat Joe Biden, and it looks like he did that and more.
But there’s another problem. Federal Election Commission filings show that Buttigieg’s campaign gave tens of thousands of dollars to the tech firm whose voting app contributed to Iowa’s reporting delays. Buttigieg’s campaign made a donation to Shadow on July 23, 2019, for “software rights and subscriptions” around the same time the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow to build an app that would make caucus voting easier and faster.
This doesn’t mean Buttigieg rigged the Iowa caucus, as some have suggested. And it doesn’t mean there’s a Democratic conspiracy to block Sanders out, as many of his supporters are arguing. As the Dispatch’s Andrew Egger pointed out last night, every single Iowa caucusgoer heard the results of their caucus before leaving. The results of the individual precincts were then reported online. The only thing that’s unknown is the total sum of these precincts, and that has more to do with the Democratic Party’s incompetence than deceit.
Still, this is an optics disaster for Buttigieg. Given his financial connections to Shadow, he should have waited for the results instead of prematurely claiming victory. Now, he will face scrutiny, even if he does come out on top, and the rift between the centrist and liberal wings of the Democratic Party will deepen.
