With Black Voters and a Suburban Surge, Joe Biden Took Texas

[RandySF]

Large and expensive, a proper effort in Texas would stretch the resources of his cash-strapped campaign. With a large Latino base in the Texas Democratic electorate, the demographics were supposed to favor Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. And the $48 million in ads raining down from Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, was likely to steal more votes from Mr. Biden than from any other candidate.

Yet with unwavering support from black voters in the cities and a surge in the suburbs, Mr. Biden notched his most significant win of the primary calendar here with an early-morning call on Wednesday, netting him a large and unexpected share of Texas’s 228 pledged delegates in the third-biggest state in the Democratic primary.

The candidate made his Texas targets clear with his travel the day before Super Tuesday, spending his final 24 hours of campaigning in Houston and Dallas, two cities with large black populations and multiple congressional districts that could help build a delegate total. Final exit polls showed Mr. Biden outperforming Mr. Sanders among black voters by 60 percent to 17 percent, a margin that most likely helped offset Mr. Sanders’s 45 percent to 24 percent advantage among Latino voters.

In a largely African-American section of Houston called Kashmere Gardens, Barry Williams, 66, a retired pastor, went to a voting site early on Super Tuesday, about an hour after the polls opened. Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, had endorsed Mr. Bloomberg, but Mr. Williams was supporting Mr. Biden, explaining that his work in the Obama administration was the key factor.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/joe-biden-texas-primary.html

[Cha]

1. Aha!

In a largely African-American section of Houston called Kashmere Gardens, Barry Williams, 66, a retired pastor, went to a voting site early on Super Tuesday, about an hour after the polls opened. Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, had endorsed Mr. Bloomberg, but Mr. Williams was supporting Mr. Biden, explaining that his work in the Obama administration was the key factor.