Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) admitted Wednesday that her campaign is being “careful” with money, according to the Washington Post, after her team pulled nearly a half million worth of ads in primary states, indicating that the Massachusetts Democrat is scaling back her campaign.
Warren didn’t, however, admit that it was because she placed a disappointing third in the Iowa caucus — at least, according to current vote counts.
More than 97% of the votes are counted in Iowa and, while there are possible problems with individual precincts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg both made solid showings and are within one point of each other, jockeying for the win. Warren is likely to be left in third when the dust settles, just ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The news is worse for Warren than Biden, though. Biden did not expect to win Iowa (though he definitely did not expect to place a distant fourth), and spent time there only after polls showed him on a steep decline within the state. Warren, however, dedicated months to winning Iowa and, at one point, even led there, besting Sanders by around five points back in early November.
Now she’s struggling to make the case she should continue running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, behind in Iowa, well behind — in fourth behind Buttigieg and Biden — in New Hampshire, and unlikely to take the lead in either South Carolina or Nevada, the two other contests that happen before Super Tuesday.
It’s clear, at least from the outside, that Warren’s fundraising efforts are falterting, too.
“Warren’s campaign on Tuesday evening canceled more than $350,000 in ad spending that was scheduled in the next two primary contest states of Nevada and South Carolina,” according to the Washington Examiner. Advertising Analytics told the Washington Post that the campaign also yanked an additional $100,000 in ads on Wednesday, also in Nevada and South Carolina.
Warren told reporters Wednesday that she was simply being “careful” with money from the small donors who are buoying her campaign.
“I just always want to be careful about how we spend our money,” she said when asked. “I just want to be very careful with this money.”
A Warren campaign email to potential donors, sent late Wednesday, was clearer: “Even though the initial numbers in Iowa look good, they’re not final,” the email read. “And since they were announced today instead of last night, we didn’t get a big night of exciting news coverage about them (or the late-night boost in fundraising that usually comes with it).”
Warren, the Washington Post says, “had just $13.5 million going into January” and she’s been spending like crazy, blanketing Iowa with television advertising and keeping a 1,000-person staff afloat, even as other campaigns are doing just as well with a staff half the size.
She’s also relying heavily on individual donors, who are more fickle than big-money campaign backers like the kind Warren pledged to ignore back at the start of her campaign. When a candidate isn’t doing well, those donors typically turn to greener pastures, leaving someone like Warren, who says she’s dedicated to resisting Wall Street and corporate money, without much in the bank. Warren’s campaign has been on the downswing, to boot, losing ten points nationally since November and hauling in less money in the first quarter of 2020 than in the last quarter of 2019.
Warren remained committed to playing off Iowa as good news at a New Hampshire townhall Wednesday night, but things are looking pretty dire for the one-time frontrunner.