MANCHESTER, N.H. — On the east side of New Hampshire’s Queen City, inside a nondescript office complex filled with law firms and dentist offices, is a workspace filled with people trying to pull off a political revolution.
Inside are the trappings of a normal corporate office space: beige walls, blue carpets, coffee pots and a large windowed conference room.
But this is Bernie Sanders’ New Hampshire operation command center, so not every accoutrement is straight from the establishment.
Two rooms are so crammed with Bernie signs, stickers and banners that it’s hard to walk, and stacked signs nearly reach the ceiling.
Campaign staffers plug away earnestly, taking time for quick meetings, conference calls and check-ins throughout the day.
With only a short time left before Tuesday’s primary, work is almost constant, and sleep is not always possible. Many staffers have green cots placed throughout the offices, and there’s a shower in the bathroom.
The lack of sleep makes for sometimes silly conversation among a crew of people who have been spending more time together than apart for a number of months.
At one point, a communications staffer comes in with a breaking news alert from BuzzFeed, that former adult film star “Ron Jeremy is Supporting Clinton.”
In a calming and fun break activity, staffers pop bubble wrap. Then back to work.
The biggest office belongs to Julia Barnes, the campaign’s New Hampshire state director. She just got over a cold, and she’s tired. She hasn’t taken a day off since Christmas.
Barnes said the workdays are very long, 15 hours sometimes. The staff’s efforts to keep spirits up, she said, create a vibe that is often comparable to summer camp.
“We have some people that jump rope in the hallway, or make sure they are eating clementines every day, or chain smoke most of the day,” Barnes said. “But I think a component for everyone is we have a lot of fun doing this with each other, and laughing and enjoying the sort of absurdity — at times — of the theater that can be politics.”
Hearing the call
The theater gives Barnes energy, and she proclaims that a Sanders win in New Hampshire is worth her blood, sweat and tears.
Barnes planned to sit out the 2016 election to attend graduate school at the University of Vermont and earn her master’s in business administration. She was living comfortably in Burlington, serving as executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party for three years.
But after a persuasive phone call from the campaign’s national field director, Phil Fiermonte — and a meeting with Sanders himself — she took the job.
“If I’m going to get out of politics, this is sort of my last shot to work for the guy whose values so closely represent mine,” she remembers thinking. “So, you know what, I’m going to take the chance and do it.”
In early August, she packed up and moved here. Her parents live in New Hampshire, which made the move easier.
“I miss the bike path in Burlington,” Barnes said. “I miss the lake. I miss the food, a lot.”
Barnes has been working in politics for eight years, mostly in Vermont and New Hampshire. Her resume includes field organizing on former New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch’s successful 2008 run, work on President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election, and three years at the Vermont Democratic Party.
She has a personal note from U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., framed on her wall and photos with various politicians, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., throughout her office.
One sign tacked to a cork board reads: “Keep Calm and Move to Vermont.”
During Barnes’ six months on the ground in New Hampshire for Sanders, the Vermont senator has risen steeply in the polls.
A CNN poll released in September gave Sanders just 7 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 60.
Today, a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls put Sanders ahead by more than 13 points. Pundits often attribute the results to a “neighbor advantage” for Sanders.
Barnes sees the rise differently, a result of tireless work and a message that resonates. She also dismisses a huge Sanders lead, saying, “We don’t trust the polls.”
“This is Clinton country,” Barnes said. “Secretary Clinton has been campaigning here in one form or another since the ’90s. There is also not a person in this state who doesn’t know who she is, and that’s not where we started with Sen. Sanders.”
She added that while Sanders is popular in towns hugging the Connecticut River, the bulk of voters live in cities in southern New Hampshire, like Manchester and Nashua.
“Howard Dean didn’t win the New Hampshire primary,” she said.
Barnes has worked in the Granite State before, with organizers now on Team Clinton.
She called them “smart and brilliant people,” adding that when she got on the ground months after competing campaigns had infrastructure in place, it “was really scary.”
But she said the Sanders campaign managed to catch up because enthusiasm for him never waned and the campaign never had to spend “time manufacturing enthusiasm and volunteers.”
She talked about residents who held Sanders events before he even announced, dedicated volunteers and a real grass-roots fundraising model.
“My first week, I was in the Burlington office before I drove here, and somebody got a ziplock bag in the mail full of pennies and nickels that somebody had found in their couch,” she recalled, laughing.
While Barnes was at first intimidated by the Clinton machine, she said the current Sanders crew is unbeatable.
“I would put our organizers against anybody,” she said.
Starting young
Barnes’ political interest was developed early, in the Midwest. She grew up in Missouri and Iowa, and volunteered in the latter state for presidential caucuses as a high schooler.
She went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and double majored in political science and women’s studies. Although she was in the heart of American politics, she never interned on Capitol Hill.
After college, Barnes was looking for nonprofit work but found herself drawn by the 2008 presidential primaries and candidate Joe Biden. She moved to New Hampshire before the primary and served as Biden’s only organizer in Hillsborough County, which includes both Manchester and Nashua.
“The bug sort of bit me, and it just stuck,” she said.
Barnes is beaming in a photo with Biden that hangs in her office, and she had nothing but kind words for the vice president.
She recalls first meeting him at the Nashua Country Club for a Rotary breakfast when Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, was running in 2008.
She told how, after getting out of his car, Biden introduced himself to Barnes before taking in the beauty of the surrounding green links.
“‘You know, I’ve been here before,’” she remembered him saying. “‘I was here in 1988. This is where I had my aneurism.’”
Barnes said she was in shock, unsure how to respond to Biden’s personal revelation.
“My face went white and my heart dropped,” she said.
But then Biden laughed and eased the mood, before continuing to reminisce.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, I got the worst headache, and I went down those stairs, into that bathroom,’” Barnes remembered. “And he could just tell that I was freaking out about it.”
So far this election, Biden is the most distinguished politician who has offered high praise of Sanders, in a CNN interview shortly before the Iowa caucuses.
“Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real. And he has credibility on it,” Biden said.
Barnes also talked about a memorable Sanders moment, before the campaign even began. She met him and Fiermonte at Uncommon Grounds on Church Street in Burlington for official Vermont Democratic Party business.
After concluding their business, Barnes spoke to Sanders about her father, a conservative independent and Vietnam veteran who connected strongly with the Vermont senator’s work on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
She joked that his far-right views on many issues led to her own political rebellion as a child.
“My teenage rebellion was not just underage drinking and staying out late,” she said. “It was underage drinking, staying out late and liberal politics.”
She said Sanders laughed and thanked her for her work.
Now, Barnes’ father represents the sort of voters Team Sanders is trying to target. Barnes said she still consults her dad on politics often and considers him a bellwether for independents in New Hampshire.
“He has found that common ground,” Barnes said about her dad. “And the reason to feel the ‘bern.’”
Asked what she would do after the campaign, Barnes said she no longer thought grad school was the next step. Although she spoke about a tough year in 2014 for Vermont Democrats, the Sanders campaign has rejuvenated her political energy.
“There’s always somebody trying to get elected to something, right?” she said.
