Hillary Clinton overwhelmed Bernie Sanders in Puerto Rico’s Democratic presidential primary on Sunday, putting her within striking distance of capturing her party’s nomination.
After a blowout victory Saturday in the U.S. Virgin Islands and a decisive win in the U.S. territory, Clinton is now less than 30 delegates short of the 2,383 needed to win the nomination, according to an Associated Press count.
“I’m for Hillary, girl,” said 83-year-old Candida Dones. “I can’t wait for a female president. She’s one of us. She wears the pants. If we don’t look out for our own interests, who will?”
The results were slow to arrive on Sunday, as officials counted ballots by hand and focused first on releasing results tied to the island’s local primary elections, said Kenneth McClintock, Puerto Rico’s former Democratic National Committeeman.
As the results from Puerto Rico trickled in, Clinton maintained a steady 2-1 lead over Sanders.
While Puerto Rican residents cannot vote in the general election, the island’s politics could reverberate into the fall. Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have left the island to escape a dismal economy, with many now in Florida.
In 2008, Clinton beat then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama with nearly 68 percent of the vote in Puerto Rico.
Republicans, meanwhile, urged Donald Trump to drop his attacks on a Latino judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University.
“We’re all behind him now,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned, adding that it’s time for unifying the party, not “settling scores and grudges.” “I hope he’ll change his direction.”
Trump refuses
So far, Trump has refused, reiterating in interviews broadcast Sunday that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage means he cannot ensure a fair trial involving a billionaire who wants to build a border wall to keep people from illegally entering the United States from Mexico. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican-born parents — making him, in Trump’s view, “a hater of Donald Trump.”
“I couldn’t disagree more” with Trump’s central argument, McConnell said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
On ABC’s This Week, Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he also does not condone Trump’s comments.
Both Clinton and Sanders spent Sunday in California, the biggest prize among the five states voting on Tuesday. Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd at Greater St. Paul Baptist Church in Oakland the country is “getting indifferent to the great toll of gun violence,” while Sanders made a series of stops in Los Angeles before an evening rally in San Diego.
In a visit to Hamburger Mary’s, where a “drag brunch” was taking place as disco lights swirled, Sanders urged Democratic voters to ‘‘stand up and make clear it is too late for establishment politics.”
Call for unity
On CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton said Sanders must help her unify the party after their extended battle.
“After Tuesday, I’m going to do everything I can to reach out, to try to unify the Democratic Party,” Clinton said. “I expect Senator Sanders to do the same and we will come together and be prepared to go to the convention in a unified way, to make our case to leave the convention and go into the general election to defeat Donald Trump.”
Clinton stopped short of saying that the Vermont senator, who has suggested he could take his fight to the convention and try to sway superdelegates who now support Clinton, should withdraw after Tuesday. She said, however, that the two have more in common than either has with Republicans.
Sanders said on the same program that he would work to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Trump no matter who the Democratic nominee was. He said he could win significant victories Tuesday.
Bloomberg news contributed to this report.