Ami Bera on Why Biden’s Tuesday Was Super for House Democrats [0:00-5:03]

Welcome to a super special Post-Super Tuesday edition of Down Ballot Counts. I'm Kyle Tricks, dad, politics editor at Bloomberg Government, with me as always a senior reporter Greg Jero. Today, we'll dissect what went down on Tuesday and what it means for November, we'll spotlight a TV ad that caught our attention, and then we'll interview Ami Barra, a congressman from California who was on the front lines of the Democratic Party's efforts to retain the House. We're there with 99% of the precincts counted. Number of other key down ballot races. This is a very dramatic turn, we will have to look at it. The House would be in order, chair requests, members clear the aisle, take seats, and cease audible conversation. From Washington, this is Bloomberg Government's Down Ballot Counts. Up first, Jero's Gem. Thank you, Kyle Jero's Gem. My number of the week is 1982. That was the last year Mississippi elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Mississippi, I point that out because Mississippi has a congressional primary coming up on Tuesday. Now, Mississippi was once heavily Democratic, but it shifted to the Republicans, like much of the South, the past couple of generations. The state has the nation's largest black population percentage at 36%, and that's a big supply of votes for Democratic candidates, but Mississippi votes Republican in federal elections because it's also culturally conservative, very Protestant, with a low rate of unionization. In a 2018 Senate special election in Mississippi, Democrat Mike Espie, a former congressman and agriculture secretary who's African American, lost a Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 7.3 percentage points, which was actually the best showing by a Mississippi Democrat in a Senate race since 1982. This year's Mississippi primaries on Tuesdays, I mentioned, and it should confirm, in November matchup and rematch between Hyde-Smith and Espie, non-partisan political analysts give Hyde-Smith the advantage. All right, well, you see there, we're paying attention to every state, even Mississippi, a state that hasn't seen much competition in a while. All right, up next, we're going to dig back down into Super Tuesday, all the results that are in and are sort of in. This is Bloomberg governments, down ballot counts. The big story coming out of Super Tuesday was Joe Biden's surge to front runner status and the swift winnowing of the presidential field to a two-candidate race with Bernie Sanders. The latest to go, Elizabeth Warren, she got out this morning. Meanwhile, the House and Senate playing fields got a little more defined. Greg, give us a couple of big takeaways or surprises. I think the big race I was watching on Tuesday, Kyle, was the Alabama Republican Senate primary. We're all wondering what Jeff Sessions, President Trump's first attorney general, a 20-year Senator trying to reclaim the seat now held by Democrat Doug Jones, how he would fare. I think polls indicated that this race would go to a runoff, that he would not win this primary outright, but still seeing the actual vote returns come in, just gave it a certainty. Sessions won just 32 percent of the vote, came in second place behind Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach who got 33 percent, which means that more than two-thirds of Alabama Republican voters did not vote for their long-time former incumbent Jeff Sessions and he's going to have a tough time holding that seat in the runoff on March 31st and the day after the primary on Wednesday, President Trump got some shot in Freuda in there when he darted off a tweet that basically was, you know, can't say he danced on Sessions' day because he's still in the primary, but he definitely liked to give an elbow to his former attorney general after that 32 percent showing. Yeah, thanks a lot. You know, Sessions was the first member of Congress to support him in his presidential race. You can tell just how mad he still is about Sessions recusing himself from the Russia probe. All right, I've got a spot piece of trivia for you. Let's see. Pop quiz. All right. Tommy Tuberville, I'd say he's favored to win this runoff. That's sort of just looking at, you know, with Trump's tweet and, you know, him finishing ahead in the primary. Who was the last college football coach to serve in Congress? The last college football coach to serve in Congress. Tom Osborne? I think that's right. Yeah. Nebraska coach. I can't think of anyone else. He represented Nebraska's third district, that huge agricultural district from, oh, 2001 until about until oh six until oh six, yeah, they didn't you ran against a governor Dave Heinemann in the primary and lost actually, which is pretty, uh, pretty impressive for Heinemann to, uh, to defeat the proper, I think it's Tom Osborne. It is. I, yeah, he served three terms, uh, and his gubernatorial hopes. Not so good. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Tom Osborne. Well, I think I agree with you on a Tuberville being the favorite in the, in the runoff. While I, sessions is not technically the incumbent, um, you know, he's, he's got universal name identification. And you have to think like, why would anyone who voted against sessions, uh, you know,