[K]EENE, N.H. — Supporters of Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders faced a dilemma here over the weekend: Which of the three local organizing events — part of nearly 5,000 taking place nationally — should they attend to watch the front-runner in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation 2020 presidential primary address them via video?
Backers of Sanders’ fellow Senate colleague and White House candidate Kirsten Gillibrand wrestled with a different challenge: How to find someone — anyone — to fill the empty seats in front of the New Yorker in an already small Keene State College meeting room.
“Money flows to white men — it’s harder to get a loan if you’re a woman or a person of color,” Gillibrand said in a speech about economic opportunity that also summed up her political predicament.
Gillibrand has visited the Granite State more times this election cycle (25) than any other presidential aspirant but one — former Maryland U.S. Rep. John Delaney, the first to announce his run two years ago. But among a Democratic field of 20, it seems only people with B names — Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — are making the A-list.
The latest University of New Hampshire poll shows Sanders first at 30%, Biden second at 18% and Buttigieg third at 15%. All the other candidates rank in single digits, with Gillibrand at 1%.
“I’ve always been discounted and I’ve always been an underdog,” the latter said in response to questions about her low numbers. “This is a marathon and not a sprint. I’m not concerned about a poll today.”
Six candidates behind Gillibrand are at 0%, including Delaney and Julián Castro, the former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development who held his own event at Keene State College Sunday evening. Forget the fact Castro has been impersonated by Jimmy Fallon on late-night television. The Texan drew only about 70 people in a room that fellow candidate Kamala Harris filled with a standing-room-only crowd of several hundred supporters just five days earlier.
“We have about 43 weeks until the primary, but who’s counting?” Castro said. “You have 20 people who are running and there’s a limited amount of bandwidth in terms of media attention. But what I appreciate about this state is people are willing to give everyone a hearing.”
Castro has his work cut out for him. Sanders made national news over the weekend for coast-to-coast volunteer events that unveiled a new online organizing tool that allows supporters to log the names of friends and family into the campaign’s voter database — a list that already numbers more than 1 million.
“We need to put together the strongest grassroots movement in the history of politics,” Sanders told supporters in a video. “And we’re off to a pretty good start.”
That said, the Vermonter is facing his own challenges. Biden, who entered the race Thursday, bested Sanders’ $5.9 million first-day fundraising total by reaping $6.3 million in the initial 24 hours of his bid. The former vice president has announced he’ll campaign in New Hampshire May 13-14, although he has yet to publicize specific places and times.
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released Tuesday showed Biden springboarding in the days after his announcement to first in New Hampshire at 20% compared with Sanders and Buttigieg tied for second at 12% (although “undecided” tops them all at nearly 27%).
For his part, Buttigieg — who won the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage” essay contest as a teenager by writing about how Sanders inspired him — has skyrocketed from 1% in February to third place in the latest Granite State voter survey to the top three in the latest Granite State voter surveys.
That’s not stopping the likes of Castro, Delaney and Gillibrand. Although the three have yet to catch on in New Hampshire, they’re polling well enough nationally to be closing in on securing a place in the first Democratic debate in June, where they expect to be joined by Biden, Cory Booker, Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.
The other announced Democratic candidates, Wayne Messam, Seth Moulton, Eric Swalwell and Marianne Williamson, have yet to meet the qualifying threshold of receiving either 1% support in three official polls or donations from 65,000 people.
As Castro wrapped up his comments Sunday, he spoke for his fellow underdogs on the commitment to moving forward.
“We still have a long way to go,” he said, “yet I’m confident by the time 2020 comes around, we can win here.”
