Buttigieg Seizes on an Opportunity as Democrats Jostle for Advantage

The results of Monday night’s Iowa caucuses were delayed after problems with reporting the returns surfaced, a debacle that shocked and frustrated the presidential candidates and their staff members, and zapped Democratic observers’ hopes of achieving clarity on an uncertain race.

But by Tuesday evening, with 62% of the vote reported and little indication of when the rest of the results would surface, Buttigieg had a narrow edge, at 26.9%, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 25.1%.

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who faces substantial challenges with people of color in later-voting contests, was happy to claim a win.

“Just in case you haven’t been glued to your phone the last few minutes, I want you to hear something from me,” he said in Laconia, New Hampshire. “A little later than we anticipated, but better late than never, official verified caucus results are coming in from the state of Iowa; they’re not complete, but results are in from a majority of precincts and they show our campaign in first place.”

The crowd erupted with cheers and chanted, “President Pete, President Pete!”

Tuesday began a new phase of the Democratic campaign even as the opening vote, the Iowa caucuses, remained unsettled. Candidates who descended on New Hampshire, fresh off overnight flights, aimed to both define their standing in Iowa and jolt their campaigns here before next week’s New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, their senior aides were effectively backstabbing one another and leaders of the Iowa Democratic Party, signaling a moment of extraordinary tension within the party.

At his first event of the day, former Vice President Joe Biden tried to put the Iowa contest behind him, while his aides questioned the integrity of the reporting process and swatted at rival campaigns that tried to declare victory before the official results.

Those initial results later indicated a fourth-place finish for Biden, which would be a major blow to a former vice president who had invested substantial time and resources in the state despite his team’s efforts to play down expectations there.

“Folks, God it’s good to be in New Hampshire,” Biden said, laughing. “It really is. I really mean it. You have no idea how happy we were to be heading to New Hampshire, to Nashua.”

He also sharpened criticism of one opponent who was expected to emerge from Iowa with some strength:Sen. Bernie Sanders, who represents New Hampshire’s neighbor Vermont and has a loyal base of supporters here. Biden’s allies have been seeking to raise expectations for Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren for months, emphasizing the advantage that candidates from neighboring states have historically enjoyed in New Hampshire.

“Bernie’s talked about the single-payer Medicare system for, health care system for the country, for 30 years now,” Biden said. “Hasn’t moved it an inch.”

Several campaigns have suggested that according to their data, Biden had a poor showing in Iowa, assertions that the Biden camp has dismissed as rooted in unofficial, unverifiable numbers — but Biden’s fresh criticism of Sanders, delivered off teleprompters, unfolded against that backdrop.

Biden, who was twice interrupted by protesters, did not stop to talk to reporters who asked whether he would accept the results out of Iowa, saying only, “I don’t know what happened in Iowa this morning.”

But even as uncertainty swirled around the Iowa results, the top candidates had already moved on to New Hampshire, with events scheduled across the state Tuesday. Others who sat out Iowa, like Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, were also campaigning here.

Buttigieg, who had made aggressive efforts before the results started emerging to claim credit for a win based on private and unverifiable data, made an early-morning appearance in Nashua, on Tuesday. He was endorsed there by the city’s mayor, Jim Donchess, meeting him for coffee at a cafe and chatting with several voters.

Buttigieg ignored questions from reporters about whether his speech on caucus night in Iowa, seemingly declaring victory absent any official results, had been premature. Later on Tuesday, asked by CNN after the partial results were released if he had any regrets about using the word “victorious,” he said: “Not at all. I mean, this is definitely a victory for this campaign.”

Speaking with reporters after the town hall in Laconia, he said that even if additional results later moved him out of first place, the news he had received Tuesday night “still amounts to an astonishing victory for our vision.”

Warren landed in Manchester, New Hampshire, shortly after 4 a.m., surrounded by senior aides and top surrogates. In brief remarks to supporters before a day of campaigning here, Warren said she felt good about her campaign’s position — even as the official Iowa results remained unclear.

“When I left Iowa, I said it is too close to call and it still is — but I feel good,” she said. “We are in 31 states and have thousands of people on the ground.”

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

What unfolded in the hours before was an extraordinary spectacle of political gamesmanship, from a group of campaigns that had long anticipated the Iowa caucuses as a moment that could bring the first dose of clarity to a volatile primary.

The delay kept a winner from being able to quickly harness his or her triumph to raise money and build momentum while shielding those who finished poorly from an immediate reckoning. It was also an embarrassment for a party trying to show unity and strength as it prepares to take on President Donald Trump.

Trump eagerly called attention to the chaos, writing on Twitter that the Democrats’ caucuses were “an unmitigated disaster.”

The Iowa contest was already wedged in between a number of high-profile news events that threatened to siphon attention from the caucuses and dull their impact, including the Super Bowl, Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday and an expected vote in the Senate to acquit Trump of impeachment charges.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Democratic officials in Iowa said the delays Monday were because of a breakdown in the reporting of results, but the chaos appeared widespread. As the night proceeded, caucus leaders and volunteers described struggling with a byzantine new system of tabulation and an app that confused many of those responsible for reporting final tallies

Alone among the candidates in enjoying the Iowa meltdown may have been Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who is not contesting any of the earliest primary and caucus states. Bloomberg has been counting on a split decision or a weak finish by Biden in February, opening the way for him to vigorously compete for delegates starting in March.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

One of Bloomberg’s closest aides made little effort to hide his delight at the events of Monday evening. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, quipped in a television interview that had Iowa Democrats used the financial-information technology marketed by Bloomberg’s company — the source of the fortune he is now spending on his campaign — they would have assembled the results in a timely fashion.

“Obviously a Bloomberg Terminal would have delivered your results by tonight,” Sheekey said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .