With the South Carolina primary on Saturday, presidential candidates are making a final push to rally more support for their campaigns. WGBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with South Carolina Public Radio reporter Thelisha Eaddy about how people in the state are responding to the race. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Have you been inundated with campaign ads?
Thelisha Eaddy: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I got home yesterday and about three more were in my mailbox. Yeah, there's a lot going on here.
Mathieu: So you're getting the mailers and I'm sure you can't turn the TV on without hearing from the candidates. We've been inundated here, of course, having just had a primary in New Hampshire and there are, of course, national ads. We cannot, for instance, hide from Mike Bloomberg. Who are you seeing?
Eaddy: We're seeing a good mixture of people. We're seeing some Mike Bloomberg ads, but also, as normal, a lot of Steyer ads, a lot of Biden ads and also Amy Klobuchar ads as well. They're circulating right along with the pack as well.
Mathieu: So let's talk about Joe Biden for a second. A few months ago, Thelisha, the conventional wisdom was that South Carolina was a slam dunk for him. We've heard the famous line about it being a firewall, but his support has faded a bit since then. Is he still the front runner in South Carolina?
Eaddy: If you take a look at some of the recent polls he is, but by a much smaller margin than what we saw earlier this month and most definitely at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. I talked with the campaign just a little while ago and they said they're not really worried. The campaign officials said polls are polls. His roots run deep and wide here in the Palmetto State. He has a good friendship with Rep. James Clyburn, who actually is expected to announce his endorsement. And then maybe for African-Americans, probably the strongest connection is him serving as vise president to the nation's first African-American president. Voters that I talked to say they feel as though they know his heart.
Mathieu: That's a pretty good thing to say as you're walking into an election. Then there's the Sanders campaign. Bernie Sanders has been having a pretty good couple of weeks coming off of New Hampshire [and] Nevada. Is that helping his chances there?
Eaddy: This is the big question mark here. When I cover campaign events and non-campaign events — just where [there is a] cross-section of people — I see a split. When I talk with older voters, they tell me that they're leaning towards Biden or they are a Biden supporter. And almost always when I talk with younger voters, especially college students, they tell me that they are leaning towards or they are for Bernie Sanders. He has a lot of field offices, a lot of staffers here and they are die hard.
I will say early on in this process when I interviewed people and talked to people on the ground, when I asked them what they were most concerned about, they would give me issues or a candidate's policy that was related to an issue. But as we got closer to now and definitely now, that kind of shifted a little bit to, "Yeah, I'm concerned about health care, but more so who can beat Donald Trump."
Mathieu: Thelisha, one name we have not mentioned is Elizabeth Warren, our senator here in Massachusetts who is hoping to make a dent in South Carolina. It's not looking like it.
Eaddy: You know, it's not looking like it. But I will say she is not giving up, even though there is messaging out there for some of the candidates at the bottom of the poll list to give up, move out the way, clear the field and throw their support behind people who are "polling at the top." But she's been here early. About this time last year, we started to see candidates start to visit South Carolina. She was one of them. She was hitting the colleges and she was having meetings with small groups of people. What's interesting about her campaign is that she's getting a lot of support from some influential African-American women who were supposed to be this large subset of the larger African-American Democratic electorate here.
So just this past week, Warren held a teleconference, if you will. During that town hall, she got the endorsement of a very popular at-large Columbia City Council woman. And then if you're going through social media, you're seeing that she's getting all this support locally from African-American women. And then nationally, she has the support of Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who has spent significant time here in the state with Warren and without Warren; they spent time in Charleston just a few days ago.
So I think she's not doing well — I think she's probably I think at number four here, according to some of the local South Carolina polls — but I know that she's getting support from this larger subset of African-American voters here. I also think it's going to be interesting to see how many votes she actually gets here in South Carolina, because she's spent the time here and she has the support behind her.
