Sanders, Warren Face a Potential Knockout Round in New Hampshire

(Bloomberg) -- New England Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will face off early next year in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary with a huge prize at stake: the claim to the party’s progressive mantle.

The two rivals have similar strengths and weaknesses. Each hails from a neighboring state and espouses popular left-leaning ideas such as Medicare for All and canceling student debt. Both are struggling to win over the black and Hispanic voters who will be influential in subsequent primaries, leaving little room for error in New Hampshire.

The Feb. 11 vote has broad implications for their campaigns. The outcome could determine which of the two candidates emerges as standard-bearer of the Democratic Party’s rising progressive wing, which is vying for dominance against an establishment represented by front-runner Joe Biden. The rivalry between Sanders and Warren will play out on July 30 when they appear on the same stage during the Democratic debate in Detroit.

Sanders and Warren are “in each other’s way — for the progressive wing reason and the regional reason,” said Democratic presidential campaign veteran Joe Trippi.

New Hampshire has played a central role in Democratic nominations. It gave Sanders an enduring boost in 2016, it resurrected Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2008, and it helped secure the 2004 and 2000 nominations for John Kerry and Al Gore. Almost no presidential hopeful has won the nomination after losing both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire.

Sanders swept the state in 2016 with a 22 point lead, but Warren is increasingly cutting into his support among its overwhelmingly white population.

A CNN-University of New Hampshire survey taken in mid-July found Sanders and Warren tied with 19% each in the state. Warren’s support had risen 14 points since mid-April, while Sanders’s had fallen by 11 points. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll of New Hampshire Democrats showed the two senators in a statistical tie for second place behind Biden’s 27%. But Warren showed more potential for growth: 57% said they’d “consider supporting” her, while 42% said the same about Sanders.

“She’s been on the ascent and he’s been on the descent,” said Kathy Sullivan, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and current national committeewoman. “Right now, I’d rather be her. He’s got more work to do than I think they would have preferred.”

Trippi said that while a poor showing in New Hampshire would be bad for either candidate, it would be more devastating for Sanders.

“If he can’t win New Hampshire, he’s in much bigger danger than she is,” Trippi said. “I just don’t see where beyond New Hampshire he can resurrect his candidacy if he doesn’t score there.”

Surveys show differences in the candidates’ appeal — for instance, Sanders does better with younger voters, while Warren is stronger with older voters. But there is clear overlap.

Burt Cohen, a former New Hampshire state senator and Portsmouth-based radio host, was a supporter and delegate for Sanders in 2016. This time, he said, he’ll take his time to examine the crowded Democratic field and decide on an endorsement by the fall.

“Bernie was the only one talking about Medicare for All in 2016,” he said. “Now many of the candidates are at least mouthing those words.”

He’s leaning toward Sanders, he said, but Warren could wind up getting his support.

“I am considering her,” Cohen said. “A lot of people are.”

Warren will return to New Hampshire on Saturday for her 17th day of campaign events, hosting a house party in Bow and a town hall in Derry. She has made more visits to the state than any rival except Kirsten Gillibrand, who is stuck under 1% in most polls. Sanders has spent six days campaigning in the state, hosting town halls and a series of ice cream socials.

The two senators have different campaigning styles. Sanders seldom speaks about himself but keeps to the issues and a narrative of moral indignation about the struggles of the middle class. Warren uses stories from her working-class childhood to illustrate her core pitch that the ladders of opportunity that allowed her to rise to Harvard law professor and U.S. senator need to be rebuilt.

Joe Caiazzo, Sanders’ New Hampshire state director, said that while he’s confident his candidate will win the state’s primary, he rejects the notion that it is a must-win: “The expectation for many people this cycle is that they have to do well in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.”

With the stakes so high, the Sanders campaign has gone on a hiring spree. It now has 45 staffers in New Hampshire, a 45% jump since May, said Carli Stevenson, the deputy director of Sanders’s state operation.

Caiazzo said the new hires will connect with the thousands of Granite State voters who volunteered for Sanders’ 2016 campaign — and recruit new ones. The campaign also just added four new campaign offices, bringing its total in the state to six. Last weekend, Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner held four events in the state to train volunteers, open one of the new offices, and kick off voter canvassing in Nashua.

The Warren campaign said it has four field offices in the Granite State. It declined to discuss staffing there, saying only that it has 300 overall staff, 60% of whom are in the first four nominating states. Warren has invested heavily in campaign personnel early on, which prompted questions about whether she could sustain that “burn rate.” But she put those doubts to rest after raising $19.1 million in the second quarter, higher than the $18 million Sanders raised.

“Warren has by far the best ground game of any of the campaigns in New Hampshire. They have really committed to a door-to-door person-to-person organizing strategy,” said Judy Reardon, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic operative who isn’t involved with any 2020 campaign. “She’s got some of the best staff out here.”

Reardon said the race is “wide open” because much of the polling at the early stage is soft and likely to change.

She said candidates outside the top three shouldn’t be counted out, noting that Kamala Harris has drawn the largest crowd of any Democrat in New Hampshire this year — 1,500 in Portsmouth during her first trip to the state.

But expectations may be highest for Sanders and Warren.

“It’s hard to explain why you didn’t win your neighboring state,” Reardon said.

--With assistance from Emma Kinery.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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