The 2020 presidential campaign of Andrew Yang, an attorney, entrepreneur, and the founder of Venture for America, began on November 6, 2017, when Yang filed with the Federal Election Commission to participate in the Democratic primaries. Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, 2020, the night of the New Hampshire primary. On March 10, 2020, Yang endorsed Joe Biden for president.
With no prior political experience and low public recognition, Yang was widely considered a longshot candidate by the media during the early stages of his campaign. In April 2018, Yang released The War on Normal People, a book discussing job displacement, automation, and universal basic income (UBI), which were central to his campaign. Yang's profile significantly increased in early 2019 after appearing on the popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience; he later appeared on numerous other podcasts, shows, and interviews. Yang's rise in notability was accompanied by the development of a devoted online fanbase that was known as the "Yang Gang". Yang raised about $41.6 million over the course of his campaign, with the vast majority of donations occurring during the final months of his candidacy. Yang qualified for and participated in all six Democratic primary debates held in 2019. In 2020, Yang did not meet the polling requirement for the seventh debate, but he later qualified for and participated in the eighth debate.
Yang's campaign strongly focused on the displacement of American workers through automation, a problem Yang stated was a major reason Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. To remedy this, Yang proposed the "Freedom Dividend," a monthly UBI of $1,000 to every American adult. Another key aspect of his candidacy was what he called "Human-Centered Capitalism", which would have replaced several traditional economic metrics with an "American Scorecard". Yang initially supported Medicare for All, but later proposed preserving private health insurance. On electoral reform, Yang supported ranked-choice voting and the implementation of democracy vouchers to drown out corporate donations. Yang proposed a version of the Green New Deal that would have reduced dependence on fossil fuels through policies such as a carbon tax and support for nuclear power. Yang's other policies included the decriminalization of opiates and legalization of cannabis, support for abortion rights and LGBT rights, and stricter gun control measures.
Background
Yang graduated from Brown University in 1996, concentrating in economics and political science. He then attended Columbia Law School, earning a Juris Doctor in 1999. After working in law for five months, he transitioned into a business career, ultimately becoming CEO of test preparation company Manhattan GMAT. In 2011, Yang founded Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit organization that encourages entrepreneurship by matching recent college graduates with startups in various cities across the United States. In 2012, President Barack Obama recognized Yang as a "Champion of Change" for his work with VFA. In 2015, Obama further recognized Yang as a "Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship". Yang stepped down as VFA's leader in March 2017.
Yang stated that he first took an interest in universal basic income (UBI) after reading Martin Ford's book Rise of the Robots. Andy Stern's book Raising the Floor further persuaded Yang to support UBI. In 2017, Yang decided to run for president after Stern remarked to him that no presidential candidate supported UBI.
Campaign 2017
Yang's candidacy began on November 6, 2017, when he filed with the Federal Election Commission to participate in the Democratic primaries. Andrew Yang was the second Democrat to announce his candidacy for the presidency. The campaign began with a small initial staff working out of an apartment owned by Yang's mother. He ran on the slogans "Humanity First" and "Make America Think Harder" (MATH). According to BBC, Yang was "one of the first and most recognizable East Asian-Americans in history to run for president". He stated that he hoped his "campaign can inspire Asian Americans to be engaged in politics." Had he been nominated, he would have become the first Asian American to serve as any major party's presidential candidate, and had he been elected, he would have become the first Asian-American president.
2018 On April 3, 2018, Yang released The War on Normal People, a book discussing technological change, automation, job displacement, the economy, and the need for a UBI. In a press release on April 19, 2018, he announced that he would be personally giving one resident of New Hampshire $1,000 per month in 2019 to show the effectiveness of his UBI policy, the "Freedom Dividend". He announced that he would do the same thing in Iowa in 2019. On August 10, 2018, Yang was a keynote speaker at the largest Democratic fundraiser in Iowa, the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding. In 2018, he made seven trips to Iowa and six trips to New Hampshire, the first two states to vote in the primaries.
2019
In early 2019, Yang's campaign was called a "longshot" by several media outlets, including Fox News, Washington Examiner, and Vox; Yang soon appeared on several noted outlets and podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience, The Breakfast Club, The Ben Shapiro Show, and Tucker Carlson Tonight. Yang's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in particular has been credited as a major turning point in his campaign. Several media sources also attributed Yang's rise in notability to his large group of online supporters, who informally referred to themselves as the Yang Gang and made a large number of Internet memes about Yang and his campaign.
Following his sudden rise in notability, Yang attracted the interest of some prominent alt-right figures and many users of /pol/, a forum on 4chan that is notorious for its alt-right politics. Yang himself denounced any support from the alt-right. In an interview with The New York Times, Yang said that he is "getting support from quarters [he] wouldn't have expected"; regarding support from the alt-right in particular, he said "It's uncomfortable. They're antithetical to everything I stand for." Yang stated that he was confused by the support he had from the alt-right, because he doesn't "look much like a white nationalist".
2020
After failing to get on the ballot for the March 17 Ohio primary, Yang announced a write-in campaign. He said that his supporters had gathered three times the required signatures, but "because of a bureaucratic paperwork issue caused by an awkwardly-worded law, nearly 3,000 Ohioans' First Amendment rights have been denied." According to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, "when Ohioans sign a petition, they deserve to know what they're signing. This is why petition forms must be submitted, complete with a statement from the candidate stating their intention to run. By their own admission, the Yang campaign failed to do that."
On January 7, Yang's campaign staff unionized. Evan Low, a member of the California State Assembly, became a national co-chair of Yang's campaign on January 15. On January 23, former Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson announced that she would support Yang in the Iowa caucuses, but noted that it was not an endorsement. Yang responded on Twitter, thanking Williamson and praising her approach. On January 24, she introduced him at a campaign event in Fairfield, Iowa. Additionally, Dave Chappelle performed two comedy shows for Yang's campaign in South Carolina.
According to The Des Moines Register Candidate Tracker, Yang appeared at 78 events in Iowa in January and 14 events in Iowa in February. The Iowa caucus ended without the declaration of a winner due to questions surrounding discrepancies over vote counts. Yang received 8,914 votes in the first alignment in Iowa, which was 5.1% of all votes cast. In the second alignment, Yang received 1,758 votes, which was 1.0% of all votes cast. Yang received 22 state delegate equivalents, which was 1.0% of all state delegate equivalents available. He did not win any delegates to the national convention. Yang's campaign fired 130 staffers in the aftermath of the Iowa caucus. Zach Graumann, Yang's campaign manager, said that the layoffs were part of a "natural evolution" of the campaign after Iowa. A spokesperson for the campaign stated that the layoffs were unrelated to negotiations between the campaign and its unionized workers.
End of campaign Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, the night of the New Hampshire primary. Zach Graumann, Yang's campaign manager, stated that Yang no longer believed he had a "real chance to win the nomination", but wanted to have a future in politics. Yang ultimately received 8,318 votes in New Hampshire, which was 2.8% of all votes cast, and did not win any national delegates from the state.
On March 10, 2020, Yang endorsed Joe Biden. While saying he understood the frustration of Bernie Sanders supporters, he referred to Biden as the "prohibitive nominee" and stated that defeating Trump was the most important goal. On April 27, Yang opened a lawsuit against the New York State Board of Elections for removing him and every other inactive candidate from the ballot and effectively canceling New York's presidential primary. Yang praised a federal judge's order to reinstate the primary, saying "I'm glad that a federal judge agreed that depriving millions of New Yorkers of their right to vote was wrong. I hope that the New York Board of Elections takes from this ruling a newfound appreciation of their role in safeguarding our democracy".
Fundraising On March 11, 2019, Yang announced on Twitter that he surpassed the fundraising threshold of 65,000 donors, which qualified him to participate in the first round of Democratic primary debates. On June 28, Yang announced that he reached 130,000 donors, which met the fundraising criterion for the third round of Democratic primary debates. By November 30, Yang had over 300,000 donors according to his campaign.
In the first quarter of 2019, Yang raised $1.7 million, of which more than $250,000 came from "the last four days of the quarter". According to Yang's campaign, "the average donation was $17.92", and "99% of the donations were less than $200". In the second quarter, Yang raised $2.8M, an increase of $1.1M from the first quarter. The campaign stated that 99.6% "of its donors were small-dollar donors [who] gave less than $200". On August 6, Yang's third-quarter fundraising reached $2M, which increased to $2.8M on August 13, matching his total second-quarter fundraising. On August 15, he reached 200,000 unique donors. In the 72 hours after the third debate (held in mid-September), Yang's campaign raised $1 million, suggesting that it "is on track to raise significantly more in the third quarter" than in the second quarter, according to Politico.
In the third quarter, Yang's campaign raised $10M, representing a 257% quarterly increase—the largest growth rate among the fundraising numbers of all candidates. The average donation was around $30, and 99% of the donations were $200 or less. According to The Washington Post, the campaign has raised a total of $15.2M and ranked first among all candidates "in percent of money coming from small-dollar donations".