The 2020 Democratic Field, Minus Joe Biden, Embraces a Death Penalty Moratorium

As recently as 2016, the issue still split the party. Now, that’s changed.

Gideon Resnick, Sam Stein
03.14.19 4:14 AM ET

Democrats running for president in 2020 are rushing to cheer Governor Gavin Newsom, after the recently inaugurated California Democrat signed an executive order to halt further executions in his state.

The first two candidates to make public statements on Newsom’s order were California’s own Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), both of whom have focused their campaigns in part on criminal justice reform and the country’s incarceration of people of color. But those senators were far from alone in endorsing the order or condemning capital punishment writ large.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) celebrated the news and once again called for the abolition of the death penalty. An aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told The Daily Beast that she supported the order too, and reaffirmed her position against capital punishment which notably came up when she opposed the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Marie Logsden, a senior adviser to former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s campaign, said he opposes the death penalty and has written about it in a prior memoir. And Glen Caplin, a top aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) told The Daily Beast that the senator “fully supports Governor Newsom's executive order.” Caplin confirmed that as a matter of principle "she is against the death penalty” too.

“Now you can be against the death penalty by embracing what I would describe as embracing mainstream American values,” Austin D. Sarat, a professor of law and jurisprudence at Amherst College told The Daily Beast. “You’re against executing the innocent. You’re against sentencing people based on the race of the victim. I think it’s now just must safer for politicians to take stands against the death penalty.”

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