Campaign

Warren, Sanders dominate debate talk time

by Reid Wilson - 07/30/19 11:07 PM ET

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) received both more time and more opportunities to speak than any other candidate during Tuesday’s debate in Detroit.

In many cases, the two senators, who are vying for control of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, were given additional time to speak after lower-polling candidates tried to contrast themselves with the front-runners.{mosads}

Warren, whose poll numbers have been rising steadily throughout the year, spoke for 18 minutes and two seconds, according to The Hill’s stopwatch. She had 21 opportunities to address questions or respond to her rivals during the showdown on CNN, which lasted two hours and 45 minutes.

Sanders spoke for 17 minutes and 17 seconds over the course of 18 individual answers and responses. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) spoke for nearly 14 minutes.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) made an early splash in his first opportunity on the debate stage, clocking in with 10 minutes and 41 seconds of talk time over the course of a dozen answers.

Bullock, who entered the presidential contest later than virtually every other candidate, missed out on the first debate held last month in Miami. Tuesday’s debate represented his best opportunity to kick-start a campaign that has yet to reach even the 65,000-donor threshold to make the first pair of debates, let alone the 130,000-donor threshold to make the next debate stage in September.

Bullock got slightly more time than former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who spoke for 10 minutes and 22 seconds, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who spoke for 10 minutes and 18 seconds — two others vying for similar progressive-pragmatic lanes on stage.

Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) had more opportunities to address questions from the moderators — 13 — than any candidate other than Warren or Sanders, but he used those chances to speak for just nine minutes and 58 seconds.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) spoke for just eight minutes and 27 seconds in a sometimes halting performance that may represent his swan song. Hickenlooper recently lost several senior staffers who urged him to drop out and run for a Senate seat instead.

Perhaps no candidate did more with less than Marianne Williamson, the spiritual adviser who warned of a “dark psychic force” in Trump’s America. Williamson got just eight minutes and 44 seconds on the microphone, but she seemed to command that time to deliver answers that illustrated her outsider status.

By the end of the debate, Williamson was the most searched-for candidate in 49 of the 50 states, according to Google Trend data. The lone exception came in Montana, where voters searched for more information about their home-state governor.