Sanders Will Limit Events After Heart Attack: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Bernie Sanders says he will “change the nature of the campaign” after a heart attack last week, scaling back the number of rallies and appearances in early primary states.

“We were doing, in some cases, five or six meetings a day, three or four rallies and town meetings and meeting with groups of people,” he told reporters outside of his Burlington, Vermont, home after visiting his cardiologist Tuesday. “I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

Sanders also acknowledged that the heart attack would likely raise questions about his age. “Everything that happens every day weighs on how people think about you. You look at the totality of who a candidate is,” he said.

Democrats’ November Debate Will Be in Georgia (6:31 p.m.)

The fifth Democratic presidential debate will be held in Georgia on Nov. 20, the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday.

The forum co-hosted by the Washington Post and MSNBC will have a higher bar to qualify than previous debates. Candidates must have contributions from 165,000 donors, up from the 135,000 threshold for the Oct. 15 debates in Ohio. And the donors must be geographically dispersed, with a minimum of 600 per state in at least 20 states.

There will also be a change in the polling requirements: Candidates can either show 3% support in four qualifying national or single-state polls, or have at least 5% support in two qualifying single-state polls released between Sept. 13 and Nov. 13 in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada.

Eight candidates have already qualified: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang.

The exact location hasn’t yet been determined. -- Laura Litvan

Sanders’s Daughter-in-Law Dies of Cancer (6:19 p.m.)

Bernie Sanders’s daughter-in-law, Raine Riggs, has died just days after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 46.

Riggs, a neuropsychologist who lived in Pennsylvania, died Saturday, the same day Sanders returned to his home in Vermont to recover from a heart attack. Her obituary, on the web site of Lee & Martin Funeral Home in Burgettstown, said she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer two days before her death.

She met Bernie Sanders’ son Levi while the two worked at an emergency food shelter in Vermont. They had three children, the obituary said. She was the director of behavioral medicine at Dartmouth Medical School for several years and also owned Riggs Geriatric Psychology in Windsor, Vermont.

Levi Sanders lost a 2018 bid for a U.S. House seat in New Hampshire. -- Laura Litvan

Warren Sticks by Account of Being Fired (5:15 p.m.)

Elizabeth Warren stood by her story that she was forced out of a teaching job in 1971 because she was pregnant, after the conservative news website Washington Free Beacon disputed her account.

“All I know is I was 22 years old, I was 6 months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else,” Warren told CBS News in an article published Monday night. “The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job.”

She also defended her account on Twitter on Tuesday, telling her 3.3 million followers she wanted to speak out about her experience because such discrimination “still happens in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.”

At campaign events, Warren cites the event as a key milestone in her life story, saying the principal of a New Jersey public school “showed me the door” after her first year when she was visibly pregnant. The Free Beacon found “minutes” at the time that say Warren was approved by the school board to teach the following year.

Her exit from the job occurred in an era when women were often fired or pushed out of jobs for being pregnant. In 1978, Congress sought to outlaw the practice by passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Warren Inches Ahead of Biden in Polling Average (4:51 p.m.)

Elizabeth Warren inched ahead of Joe Biden to top the RealClearPolitics polling average of Democratic candidates for the first time on Tuesday.

Warren squeaked past Biden by a mere 0.2% in the aggregate of polls, averaging 26.6% to his 26.4%. The boost was the result of a Quinnipiac Poll where she was on top with 29%, followed by the former vice president with 26%, but still within that poll’s 4.7 percentage-point margin of error.

Warren had long been trading places with Bernie Sanders for second or third place, while Biden enjoyed a comfortable lead. She decisively overtook Sanders in mid-September and has been eroding Biden’s edge since then.

Polling averages are considered a more reliable gauge of a candidate’s standing than single surveys because they rely on a fuller set of data. -- Emma Kinery

Trump Feuds With Minneapolis Mayor Over Rally (11:55 a.m.)

President Donald Trump is feuding with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over who should pay the bill for the police deployment at a campaign rally in the city this week.

The city told the Target Center, where the Oct. 10 rally is scheduled to be held, that it would have to pay the $530,000 security costs, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The arena, according to the Star Tribune, then allegedly told the Trump campaign that it would have to cover the bill or would not be allowed to hold the rally there.

In response, Trump fired off a tweet accusing Frey of trying to block his visit and calling him a “lightweight.” And Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, issued a statement accusing the mayor of “abusing the power of his office” while the campaign’s lawyers sent the city a lawyer threatening a lawsuit.

Frey responded with a tweet: “Yawn ... Welcome to Minneapolis where we pay our bill, we govern with integrity, and we love our neighbors.”

Parscale later said in a statement that the dispute had been settled and that the campaign “has not agreed to pay any additional funds.” The Trump campaign still owes nine cities at least $841,219 in total for police security for previous rallies, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity. -- Emma Kinery

Biden Unveils Proposal to Boost College Access (5:30 a.m.)

Joe Biden unveiled an education plan Tuesday that focuses on making colleges more affordable and strengthening pathways to the middle class that do not require a bachelor’s degree.

The proposal calls for a $750 billion investment in educational opportunities after high school that would be financed, according to the campaign “by eliminating the stepped-up basis loophole and capping the itemized deductions the wealthiest Americans can take to 28%.”

It would provide two years of community college tuition free while also helping students in the two-year institutions with textbook and transportation costs and other expenses.

The plan also includes a $50 billion investment in work force training, doubling the maximum value of Pell grants and increasing the number of students eligible to qualify for the grants. It would also halve payments on undergraduate federal student loans and revamp the public loan service forgiveness program. The proposal also calls for investment in historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, including $18 billion in grants to those schools.

“It’s about our economy because when students like mine get the chance to learn, we’re all better off,” Jill Biden said on a conference call with reporters Monday night. The former vice president’s wife, who still teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, helped shape the plan.

Many of Biden’s primary rivals, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have rolled out plans for higher education. Warren proposes to cancel 95% of student debt while Sanders says his plan would eliminate all student debt and abolish tuition for public colleges and universities. -- Tyler Pager

COMING UP

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation will host a town hall at the University of California at Los Angeles devoted to LGBTQ issues on Friday. Candidates scheduled to attend are: Warren Cory Booker, Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro and Tom Steyer. Sanders, who has been recovering from a heart attack, also is scheduled to appear, but his campaign hasn’t said whether he still plans to attend.

The fourth Democratic debate is scheduled for Oct. 15th at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. Twelve candidates are slated to take part: Biden, Warren, Sanders, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Harris, Klobuchar and O’Rourke, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, Steyer and Andrew Yang.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union will host forums in Iowa with Democratic presidential candidates on Oct. 13. Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris and Michael Bennet have confirmed that they will attend.

--With assistance from Tyler Pager, Emma Kinery and Laura Litvan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley, John Harney

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