All bets off as Clinton ‘firewall’ in question
Sanders’ momentum sets up possible showdown in Nevada caucuses
LAS VEGAS — By the time Bernie Sanders launched his challenge to Hillary Clinton last May, her campaign team had already been on the ground in Nevada for a month.
Nevada was supposed to be Clinton’s “firewall,” where she could stop Sanders’ progress no matter what happened in Iowa or New Hampshire. But with both presidential hopefuls headed to the state this weekend to campaign ahead of the Feb. 20 Democratic caucus, Clinton’s sure bet is off.
After suffering a doubledigit defeat to Sanders in New Hampshire, Clinton’s campaign staffers are quietly lowering expectations here, saying they are preparing for a close race.
They acknowledge that Sanders has caught up quickly since launching his Nevada effort in November, opening nearly twice as many field offices as Clinton and outspending her on television.
Although the number of convention delegates at
stake is small, a loss for Clinton would be big.
Clinton’s campaign wrote off her New Hampshire defeat to circumstances that uniquely favored Sanders: the electorate was dominated by the white liberal voters who make up the core of his support; rules allowed independents to vote in the primary; Sanders hails from neighboring Vermont.
In Nevada, the campaign has no excuses.
Roughly a third of Democratic caucus-goers are Latino or African-American, two groups among whom Clinton has historically done well. Her national campaign manager, Robby Mook, ran Clinton’s Nevada operation in 2008. In 2008, Clinton won the popular vote in the state’s caucuses, but Barack Obama ended with one more delegate.
The race is also a test for Sanders, who must prove he can appeal to non-white audiences who are crucial to winning both a Democratic nomination and the general election.
“We’re the first state in the contest that actually reflects what this country
looks like and where this country is heading,” said Leo Murrieta, a political consultant who specializes in outreach to the state’s growing Latino population, and who is backing Clinton. “Nevada is a perfect case study.”
The winner in Nevada will gain momentum going into the South Carolina primary Feb. 27 and the March 1 primaries, when a dozen states vote.
With little reliable public polling in Nevada, it’s hard to say who has that momentum now.
Jon Ralston, a longtime political analyst in Nevada, said the Clinton campaign is paying close attention this year to rural Nevada counties that have smaller populations but can supply crucial delegates. Former President Bill Clinton was recently dispatched to the small Mojave Desert city of Pahrump to campaign for his wife.
Clinton is also making an overt pitch to Nevada Latinos, who could make up as much as 20 percent of this year’s Democratic electorate, Ralston predicts. Many of her campaign stops in the state have been geared to Latinos, and her campaign has launched a Latina-to-Latina phone-bank program as well as a Spanishlanguage caucus-training program called “Caucus Conmigo.”
“Our strategy has been to build a campaign that really looks and feels like Nevada,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Tim Hogan, who said he expects Clinton to prevail after “a close race.”
But several aspects of the Nevada caucus process may work to Sanders’ advantage.
The state offers sameday registration for voters; in 2008 a quarter of voters registered on caucus day. The prospect that a hotly contested caucus will cause more voters to show up and register as Democrats is one reason the state’s most powerful Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, has held out on endorsing either candidate, he said recently.
The caucuses also allow voting by 17-year-olds who will turn 18 by the time of the November election. Sanders’ campaign is powered in part by the energy of first-time voters.
The Sanders team also believes his campaign promises to tax Wall Street will connect with voters in Nevada, a state that is only now recovering from the home foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession.
“Hillary got a big, big head start,” Sanders spokeswoman Rania Batrice said. “But as we’ve seen in other parts of the country, that doesn’t necessarily make a difference.”