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The presidential campaign of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday downplayed the significance of the upcoming Democratic primary in South Carolina and said it is considering naming a potential vice president during the primary process.
Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said in an interview with MSNBC that the South Carolina primary, slated for Saturday at which Bloomberg's name won't be on the ballot, "is not going to matter," adding that the "Super Tuesday" next week "is going to be really definitional for this race."
Sheekey also shrugged off concerns that former Vice President Joe Biden's perceived win in South Carolina would mean much. The primary "hasn't happened yet" and "he was winning by 35 points a month ago and now quite frankly the question is whether he will win at all," Sheekey said, referring to Biden.
Several polls conducted in the state ahead of the primary show Biden leading the Democratic field, with a Monmouth University poll published Thursday having the former vice president retaining an advantage over second-placed Bernie Sanders by 20 percentage points -- 36 percent to 16 percent.
Meanwhile, Sheekey said the Bloomberg campaign would consider naming a running mate even when the Democratic nominating process is still ongoing.
"We've thought about it," Sheekey said. "I think the other campaigns have thought about it too ... We do need to figure out how to consolidate different factions of this party. We need to figure out how to bring people together."
An avowed Trump critic, Bloomberg has changed party affiliations several times. He was a Democrat before 2001, a Republican between 2001 and 2007, and an independent until 2018. He registered as a Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
(CGTN)
