SANDERS’ SUPPORTERS SHOW STEADFAST DEVOTION
Despite heart attack, he’s a formidable contender in Iowa
GARNER, Iowa
Dawn Smallfoot put up a Bernie Sanders sign in her yard after hearing him speak in spring 2015. It’s been there ever since.
“Why take it down?” she said on a recent Monday evening, during a break from making calls to potential Sanders supporters. “I was waiting for his return.”
His campaign is counting on that kind of devotion.
With less than six weeks until voting begins, the loyalty Sanders commands has turned him into a formidable contender in the 2020 race. Despite having a heart attack in October that threatened to derail his second quest for the Democratic nomination, he remains at or near the top of polls in Iowa and other early states, lifted by his near ubiquitous name recognition and an enviable bank account.
His anti-establishment message hasn’t changed for 50 years, and it resonates with working-class voters and young people who agree that the system is corrupt and that it will take a revolution to fix it.
The scenario seemed unlikely just months earlier. As Sanders, 78, lay recovering in a hospital in Las Vegas, two new stents in one of his arteries, some of his staff members were unsure if he would continue his campaign. With Sanders, Vermont’s junior senator, already slumping in the polls, even some allies thought he should drop out and throw his support behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a fellow progressive who was surging.
But then he secured the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, DN.Y., giving his campaign a much-needed shot of energy. In the debates, he was steady, loose and largely unscathed. On the trail, he began to display a newfound joy and humor. And Warren slipped from the top of the field, reopening the progressive lane for him.
Sanders’ revival has reshuffled the Democratic primary race, providing a counterweight to the shift toward centrism in recent months that has elevated Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and kept former Vice President Joe Biden atop the national polls. And if it lasts, it would add to the likelihood of an extended primary battle, with Sanders splitting delegates in the early states with several other candidates. He still faces a difficult path to the nomination. Warren has siphoned off some of his support, and his entire campaign rests on the conviction that he can pull in voters who might otherwise not show up at the ballot box.
In addition, he has a strained relationship with the Democratic establishment, which remains bitter over the division he and his supporters sowed after the 2016 primaries, and chafes at his refusal to engage with the traditional party apparatus.
Yet in Iowa, and elsewhere, the tension with the party has served only to reenergize Sanders and his loyalists, who are faithful to him in a way that no other candidates’ supporters are: While backers of other Democrats often list three or four contenders when asked to name their top choice, Sanders’ fans are unwavering.
A recent poll from The Des Moines Register showed that, among likely Democratic caucus-goers who said Sanders was their top choice, 57 percent said their minds were made up; according to The Register, no other candidate registered above 30 percent.
“Bernie Sanders is definitely being underestimated in Iowa,” said John Grennan, the Democratic chairman in Poweshiek County, Iowa.
Ember writes for The New York Times.