Jason Palmer, an education technology venture capitalist and former staffer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, won the American Samoa Democratic caucus Tuesday, NBC News projects.
Palmer won 51 votes, despite having never visited the territory, while President Joe Biden won 40 votes.
"You can never expect to beat an incumbent president, but I love the people of American Samoa, and they’ve been so wonderful to me this past month," Palmer told NBC News after his projected victory.
Palmer, largely an unknown figure before Tuesday, said he held four virtual campaign events in American Samoa in recent days, and he won several hundred votes in New Hampshire's and Nevada's Democratic primaries this year.
Palmer was also on the ballot in Colorado and Vermont on Tuesday, and he said he's on the ballot in 16 states and territories this cycle.
He's looking ahead to Arizona, where, he said, he’ll soon be releasing his plan to solve the “immigration crisis.”
Palmer added that his goal is to amass as many delegates as possible so he can influence the convention to make education a top priority in this election.
Pressed about whether he would support Biden if he were the eventual nominee, Palmer said that if he doesn't get the nomination, "I will support the Democratic nominee for president. But it’s my hope that Joe Biden steps aside for the next generation of leaders.”
Palmer said that there are other great leaders in the Democratic party closer to his age (52) ready to step up and lead and that they have much better chances of beating Donald Trump in the fall.
He said those leaders could be himself or Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jared Polis of Colorado or Gavin Newsom of California.
Though his win in the American territory came as a surprise, the primary hasn’t always predicted the eventual nominee.
In 2020, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg won the territory's Democratic caucus, picking up four delegates to the Democratic National Convention, while Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii came in second, earning two delegates to the convention.
In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the American Samoa Democratic caucus and also won the Democratic nomination. Clinton also won the caucus in 2008, though she didn’t win the Democratic nomination.
American Samoa's Democratic caucuses generally have low turnout. Ninety-one people voted Tuesday, while over 300 voted in the 2020 contest, which featured 10 candidates. In 2016, over 200 people voted in the Democratic caucus.
According to the Facebook page of the American Samoa Democratic Party, the caucus is held at one location, at the Department of Youth and Women's Affairs in Tafuna, where voters cast ballots as in a traditional primary or general election.
However, party-run nominating contests are among the only ways for voters in American Samoa to participate in the presidential election.
Only eligible voters in the 50 states are allowed to vote in November's general election, excluding voters in American Samoa and other U.S. territories.
Asked in December why he decided to run for president, Palmer told Inside Higher Education that the biggest reason was that of “all the reports about young people feeling helplessness and despair, an overall sense that the biggest problems of our era aren’t being addressed.”
He added: “When education or workforce readiness comes up in our national debate, it’s about critical race theory and transgender bathrooms, not 21st century skills, apprenticeships, credentials or quality jobs. This is not acceptable. I will not allow the United States of America to sink into an abyss of ignorance — not on my watch.”
While Palmer will win several delegates to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, it's unlikely that he'll have any kind of solid path to the presidential nomination.
According to Federal Election Commission reports, Palmer has raised $570,000 for his campaign, but over $530,000 of it came from a personal loan from the candidate.
A Biden campaign aide told NBC News on Tuesday that he didn’t know who Palmer was.
Biden leads the race with 994 delegates. No other candidate on the Democratic side had notched any delegates going into Super Tuesday, though "uncommitted" earned two delegates in Michigan after 13% of Democratic primary voters there voted "uncommitted," rather than select a candidate, in protest of Biden's approach to Israel's war against Hamas.
