Marianne Williamson, who ended her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this month, says she plans to support onetime rival Andrew Yang ahead of the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.
She said she admires Sens. Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, but that they’ll make it “past Iowa and beyond” and that they don’t need her help right now.
“I’m lending my support to Andrew in Iowa, hopefully to help him get past the early primaries & remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. We need that this year,” Ms. Williamson, the author and self-help guru, said on Instagram overnight Wednesday.
She said she wasn’t officially endorsing anyone at this point.
“Andrew’s personality is like a tuning fork realigning us with something we need to retrieve, taking us back to a more innocent time, making us remember to chuckle,” she said.
She said Mr. Yang, a tech entrepreneur, is “light in tone, but he is deep in substance.”
“I know from first hand experience the breadth of his intellect and the expansiveness of his heart,” she said.
The caucuses are structured so that supporters of candidates who don’t win 15% support after the first “alignment” can switch their allegiance to someone else.
So with the proper organization, supporters of a candidate who fails to hit 15% after the first round can convince enough people to join their cause so their candidate becomes “viable” after the second and final “alignment” of the night and gets awarded delegates.
Mr. Yang, who has outlasted a host of more seasoned politicians in his upstart bid for the White House, is currently running in sixth place in Iowa with about 4% support in the latest Real Clear Politics average.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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