CONNECTICUT, USA — Connecticut voters participating in the 2024 Democrat primary election will have four presidential candidates to choose from on the ballot.
On Feb. 27, Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, along with students from Achievement First Amistad High School in New Haven, selected the order of names that will appear on the presidential primary ballots.
On the Democrat side, the candidates from first to last will be listed as Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, Cenk Uygur, and Joe Biden. Two of the four candidates, Phillips and Uygur, have dropped out since announcing their bid for the White House but will appear on the ballot in the 2024 presidential preference primary.
After previously suspending her bid for the White House, 71-year-old Marianne Williamson announced her decision via YouTube on Feb. 28 to “unsuspend her campaign.” The former 2020 presidential candidate is the self-help author of 15 books, a political activist, and a one-time spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey, according to the Associated Press. She was also the first major Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential nomination.
In the YouTube video of her announcement to unsuspend her presidential bid, Williamson highlighted her policy plans, including supporting Medicare for all, tuition-free college and tech school, paid family leave, subsidized child care, eliminating the entire college loan debt, and introducing a new U.S. Department of Peace.
Dean Phillips, a 55-year-old Minnesota congressman, announced in an X (formerly Twitter) post on March 6 that he was ending his bid for the White House in the Democratic primary race against Biden. In the post, he said that he ran for president “to resist Donald Trump” and encouraged his supporters to refocus their efforts toward helping Biden win the general election.
In a campaign video posted in January, Phillips advocated for a national health insurance program such as Medicare for All, the construction of 7,000,000 homes to tackle the homelessness crisis, a plan to ease student debt by investing $5,000 for every American baby born, supporting rights to abortion, reducing gun violence, working to end the opioid epidemic, and protecting social security.
On March 6, Cenk Uygur, host of the progressive news podcast “Young Turks,” announced in a video on his YouTube channel that he was suspending his campaign for U.S. president.
According to the Associated Press, he was disqualified from being on the ballot in multiple states due to him being born in Turkey. The Constitution states that all presidents must be natural-born citizens.
Policies listed on his campaign website included paid family leave, increasing the minimum wage, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, ending private financing of elections, and supporting abortion rights.
On March 12, U.S. President Joe Biden won enough delegates to be nominated as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the 2024 general election. After his victory in the 2020 general election, he is on track to a second matchup with former President Donald Trump, who also gained the delegates needed to clinch the Republican Party’s nomination.
In Biden’s recent State of the Union address, he asked Congress to pass additional aid for Ukraine, called efforts to restrict abortion an “assault on freedom,” announced plans to increase humanitarian assistance in the Gaza war, and referenced his administration’s role in the recovery of the economy post-COVID.
Biden, running for reelection at 81 years old, has also been the subject of criticism regarding his age. A report from the U.S. special counsel released in February raised concerns about his memory as “hazy,” “poor,” and having “significant limitations”, despite Biden’s claim that his “memory is fine.”
More information on voting in Connecticut’s primary on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, can be found on our website here.
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