[K]EENE, N.H. — The press corps was awaiting the arrival of 2020 Democratic presidential contender Beto O’Rourke as time-killing chatter turned to complaints about the insurgent’s campaign.
Not Team Beto, but that of a fellow White House aspirant, Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Reporters set to cover the Texan’s debut in the first-in-the-nation primary state knew O’Rourke and Sanders reaped similar headlines for each raising a pacesetting $6 million in the 24 hours after entering the race. But those chronicling both candidates’ New Hampshire launches couldn’t help but notice an equally high number of differences.
Journalists seeking access to O’Rourke’s meet-and-greet at Keene State College were told to simply show up at the student center, where they rearranged the atrium’s chairs into a makeshift media lounge beside a bench the candidate would step onto and speak from.
Sanders’ event at the nearby Colonial Theatre was another story. The self-described “Our Revolution” campaign required preregistration, which led to emailed instructions, onsite ticketing, security screenings and escorting to a back-of-the-room press pen. Reporters who dared stray — even to quote an especially enthusiastic supporter in the front row — were reeled in and reminded of the rules.
Contrast that to when the Vermonter first ran for office in 1972. The former Liberty Union Party candidate didn’t own a suit and was so nervous listeners could hear his knees knocking during his inaugural radio interview. Yet nearly a half-century later, the same man is communicating through what he calls the “corporate media,” selling $27 “For All” T-shirts and chartering planes for coast-to-coast travel.
The reporters awaiting O’Rourke soon would discover why.
‘It’s appropriate to use the tools that are available’
Starting his electoral career as Burlington mayor in 1981, Sanders won by 10 votes with his trademark calls both for economic and social equity and against the establishment, be it multinational corporations, political party machinery or the mainstream media.
The now 77-year-old has a history of declining comment on articles he deems “political gossip.” But he has talked up strategy in such books as his recently revised memoir “Outsider in the White House.”
“Our campaign had a great deal of energy, but little sophistication,” he writes of his initial mayoral bid. “We did everything within the state of Vermont, everything ‘in-house,’ usually in my house.”
Millennials think of Sanders as the longest-serving independent ever elected to Congress. But their parents know he ran and lost two years before his historic 1990 U.S. House victory. Promoting the same themes then as now, he initially struggled to win sufficient support.
“In case you haven’t noticed, elections do not have much to do with the burning issues facing our society,” he writes in his memoir. “Most campaigns are about thirty-second TV ads, getting out the vote, polling, and reaching undecided voters.”
To win the game, Sanders decided he’d have to play it. He almost doubled his campaign spending from 1988 to 1990 and went on to win eight terms as a congressman and, starting in 2006, three terms as a U.S. senator — all by increasingly tapping fundraising and technology.
“Is it against some law of nature for a progressive and democratic socialist to present effective television ads, or is that just something that Republicans and Democrats are allowed to do?” he writes in his memoir. “Are we betraying the cause of socialism because we don’t communicate with mimeographed leaflets and pictures of Depression-era workers in overalls and caps?”
“The world has changed,” he continues, “and it’s appropriate to use the tools that are available.”
‘A grassroots campaign is great, but …’
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager and 2020 senior adviser, spells out those measures in his recent book “How Bernie Won.” In it, the St. Albans native recounts his transformation from a 20-year-old volunteer holding a sign at the 1986 Enosburg Dairy Festival to a presidential campaign staffer who recommends smaller-than-required event venues so the press will report overflow crowds spilling onto the streets.
“A grassroots campaign is great, but it’s not going to be enough to win,” Weaver recalls telling Sanders before his first White House bid. “We will also have to use all the modern tools of campaigning. We are going to have to do it all.”
Then and now, that has meant hiring what’s currently 100 people (collectively the first major presidential campaign staff to unionize) to coordinate not only old-fashioned nuts and bolts but also newfangled online messaging and fundraising.
Such work can spark positive headlines. The New Republic just opined “Bernie Sanders Is the Frontrunner. Obviously” after he collected $18.2 million in first-quarter contributions, with more than a half-million individual donors — a majority under age 39, and 20% new to the cause — giving an average of $20.
“It reflects something about grassroots support,” campaign manager Faiz Shakir says of the figures. “There’s no kowtowing at the altar of the rich here.”
But Sanders’ efforts also have spurred negative buzz. His use of private jets to travel to far-flung events has drawn criticism, with staffers of 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton recently asking Politico why he has spent at least $342,000 on such carbon-generating flights over the past two years.
Reporters awaiting O’Rourke in New Hampshire didn’t need to contact a Sanders spokesperson to learn the answer. They understood when they discovered the former three-term El Paso congressman was running two hours late after he rented a minivan to drive from an earlier event 450 miles away in Pennsylvania.
“We’ll be there soon,” O’Rourke said from behind the steering wheel on a Facebook Live update. “There’s still some kinks to work out.”
As the crowd of students and curious adults began to thin, journalists questioned whether they’d be able to meet deadlines for late-night broadcasts and early-morning newspapers.
“Beto O’Rourke’s 2020 campaign is a youthful folly,” one Washington Post headline would report.
‘We are far ahead of where we were’
Other national outlets have been similarly critical of O’Rourke’s freshman missteps.
And CNN: “His refusal to answer questions about his campaign’s structure or fundraising, his apologies for his own remarks and voters’ critiques that he is light on substance have raised questions about whether O’Rourke’s be-everywhere, meet-everyone approach is delivering what Democratic voters really want.”
The Sanders’ machine, in comparison, is generating big numbers and even better news.
“Bernie Sanders is more pragmatic than you may think,” a Post headline proclaimed this past week.
“GOP lawmakers who have worked with Sanders — including John McCain before he died — have often described him as a results-oriented realist and a savvy negotiator,” the accompanying article reported. “In his stump speech, Bernie now makes the case that neither he nor his ideas are radical, but that he’s just been ahead of the curve and the time has finally come for Medicare-for-all, tuition-free college and a $15 national minimum wage.”
“Make no mistake,” it concluded, “Sanders really could be the Democratic nominee in 2020.”
The campaign addressed its advances in a recent press call that played up the fact a majority of staffers are female and roughly 40 percent people of color.
“Our success is not just in the money,” campaign co-chair Nina Turner said. “The people power is just as important.”
Weaver, for his part, noted during the call that the nation’s traditional first caucuses in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire would be followed by a more crowded schedule with voting in Nevada and South Carolina in late February and Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia in early March.
“A number of campaigns are going to have to make difficult, difficult choices,” Weaver said of how and where to invest money and manpower. “As well as we did in 2016, we are far ahead of where we were in that race. This campaign will have the resources and the volunteer grassroots strength to compete in every single state in the primary process.”