Clinton, Sanders appear to split KY and OR primaries; their battle intensifies
Bernie Sanders was declared the winner in Oregon not long after the voting ended, but Hillary Clinton is the apparent winner in Kentucky's Democratic primary Tuesday night, besting Sanders by a razor-thin margin -- a mere 1,800 votes, at latest count.
That victory puts Clinton further along the path to securing the Democratic nomination and makes Sanders' argument for remaining in the race an even tougher one. But that doesn't mean he or his supporters are backing down, and in fact, the intra-party fight appears to be ramping up, with Sanders' fans complaining that the party establishment is rigging the race in Clinton's favor.
Now, instead of watching Republicans battle it out at a contested convention in Cleveland this July, Democrats may be looking at chaotic convention of their own.
"We are going to fight for every last vote until June 14, and then we are going to take our fight to the convention," Sanders told supporters in California after the Kentucky results came in Tuesday night. "...It will be a steep climb. I recognize that. But we have a possibility of going to Philadelphia with a majority of pledged delegates."
Kentucky Sec. of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said on CNN Tuesday night that while the state is unable to certify the results until Wednesday, it "unofficially" looks like Clinton has won. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton led Sanders 47 percent to 46 percent; the margin was less than 2,000 votes out of more than 220,000 cast.
After losing Indiana and West Virginia to Sanders earlier this month, Clinton spent considerable time and resources on winning Kentucky in the hopes of finally putting the primary to rest: she took multiple trips to the state, holding a total of 11 events there in the last two weeks, and outspent Sanders significantly on the airwaves after being outspent by him in most recent states. The Center for Public Integrity's analysis of campaign spending showed Clinton spent nearly three times as much as Sanders on ads in Kentucky.
In a Tuesday night tweet, Clinton declared victory and nodded toward the idea of Democratic unity going forward. "We just won Kentucky!" she tweeted. "Thanks to everyone who turned out. We're always stronger united."
Though there is no exit polling available for Kentucky, Clinton was clearly helped by the fact that it's a closed primary -- in open primaries, where independents can choose to cast their ballots for either Republicans or Democrats, Sanders has typically done very well among independents and boosted his numbers as a result.
Sanders nodded to that in his Tuesday night speech, saying he Kentucky's closed primary is "something I'm not all that enthusiastic about."
For Sanders, with only nine contests remaining before the end of primary season, an already daunting path became even more so on Tuesday night. Before Kentucky and Oregon's delegates were counted, CBS News estimated that Sanders needed 87 percent of all remaining delegates, pledged and superdelegates, in order to reach the required 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
Kentucky's incredibly narrow margin means Clinton and Sanders will likely split the state's delegates evenly, taking 27 each--meaning he'll need to win an even higher percentage of the remaining delegates after Tuesday in order to have any chance at the nomination.
But the very public disagreement between Sanders and state and national Democratic Party leaders is intensifying, even as primary season winds down. It came to a head in Nevada this weekend, when Sanders supporters tussled with party leaders over what they saw as an unfair advantage for Clinton delegates and representatives in the state.
The situation deteriorated to the point that Sanders supporters reportedly threw chairs and even booed California Sen. Barbara Boxer -- security was forced to shut the event down.
In a statement Tuesday, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the Democratic primary rules have been in place for "decades," and that the DNC is "deeply concerned about the troubling details" outlined by the Nevada Democratic Party.
"We will be reaching out to the leadership of both of our campaigns to ask them to stand with the Democratic Party in denouncing and taking steps to prevent the type of behavior on display over the weekend in Las Vegas," she said.
But rather than working to mollify his supporters, Sanders did the opposite: on Tuesday afternoon, he put out a defiant statement that seemed to urge on his supporters and suggested the Democratic Party's rules are unfair.
"At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place," he said, outlining his complaints.
Still, later Tuesday, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on CNN that there is "not going to be any violence in Philadelphia."
"We hope for a fair and orderly convention," he added. "I think whoever the ultimate nominee is will want to unify the party on the back of the convention so we can all go out and defeat Donald Trump in the fall."
