This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Former presidential candidate and secretary of state John Kerry has reportedly been overheard discussing a late bid for the Democratic nomination, in order to stop “the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic party – down whole”.

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A day before the Iowa caucuses, Sanders leads the way in public polling concerning the first contest in the Democratic race to face Donald Trump in November. But many in the party see the independent senator from Vermont as too leftwing to be the nominee.

NBC News reported that one of its staff overheard Kerry talking on the phone at the Renaissance Savory hotel in Des Moines.

“Maybe I’m fucking deluding myself here,” he reportedly said, discussing with an unidentified caller how he would have to give up board positions and paid speeches if he ran but also saying donors like Doug Hickey, a venture capitalist, might “raise a couple of million” to help.

Asked about the call, Kerry said he was “absolutely not” considering a run, NBC reported.

He later tweeted: “As I told the reporter, I am absolutely not running for president. Any report otherwise is categorically false. I’ve been proud to campaign with my good friend Joe Biden, who is going to win the nomination, beat Trump, and make an outstanding president.”

A tweet which said “any report otherwise is fucking (or categorically) false” appeared to have been deleted.

Sanders was campaigning in Iowa on Sunday before flying back to Washington for the concluding days of Trump’s impeachment trial. He did not immediately comment on the NBC report. The People for Bernie, a campaign group, simply tweeted: “?”

Kerry was the Democratic nominee in 2004, losing narrowly to President George W Bush. A longtime Massachusetts senator, he was secretary of state in Barack Obama’s second term.

He flirted with a run against Trump in 2020 but has instead campaigned for former vice-president Joe Biden, who leads Sanders in national polling but has seen his lead shrink as the senator has surged.

The former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who ran for the nomination against Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016, is another senior Democratic party figure who does not want Sanders to be the nominee.

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“I do not believe that he would be a strong candidate for our party in the fall,” O’Malley told the Guardian in an interview published on Sunday.

Sanders, O’Malley said, “has been a kind of stalwart of the National Rifle Association, a man who said immigrants steal our jobs right up until he ran for president, a guy who said the sound of John Kennedy’s voice made him nauseous”.

“He’s a man who never has accomplished anything in public office, who has I believe demonstrated his inability to forge a governing consensus, let alone hold a governing consensus. And I think he’d be an awful choice.”