#Joe Biden wins New York primary, adds to insurmountable delegate lead

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, added a couple-hundred New York delegates to his already insurmountable primary lead Tuesday.

The Associated Press called the race for Biden just after polls closed at 9 pm for the former vice president whose challengers have all bowed out of the race.

However, officials and observers say it’s too early to say what the final margins of the New York presidential primary race because nearly two-thirds of the ballots were cast by mail — and the Board of Elections won’t begin to count them until next week.

New York has 320 delegates in the Democratic convention, counting super delegates. The bulk, 274, are awarded proportionally based on the outcomes of the primary across the state.

The longtime Delaware lawmaker scored backing from Democratic heavyweights across the Empire State, including from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been floated as a possible cabinet secretary in a Biden administration.

“I support Joe Biden for president, and I believe he’s going to be the next president,” Cuomo told Good Morning America last week, before pivoting to kibosh rumors he is interested in a federal appointment. “I am not running for anything. I am Governor of New York and that’s all I want to be.”

Biden’s New York win comes nearly three weeks after he clinched enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination thanks to a sweep of early June primaries — including the District of Columbia, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

It wasn’t an easy path to victory for Biden.

He entered the race as the clear-frontrunner only to see his campaign sputter in key contests in Iowa and New Hampshire as Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), a self-described socialist, pulled ahead of what was a highly-fractured field.

However, he scored a key endorsement from longtime lawmaker and civil rights leader Rep. James Clyburn that propelled him to a ship-righting win in South Carolina and helped him gain momentum to dominate the first Super Tuesday contests.

Sanders attempted to battle back into the race but the eruption of the coronavirus pandemic forced both men to pull their campaigns off the trail, stopping any comeback attempt in its tracks.

Biden will be formally nominated by the Democratic Party at its August convention in Milwaukee, Wisc.