KEENE, N.H. — Bernie Sanders may have won the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary and hail from neighboring Vermont, but that’s not stopping his 2020 White House rivals from aiming to beat him in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation vote.
“With a president this divisive, we cannot risk dividing Americans further, saying that you must either be for a revolution or you must be for the status quo,” former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, referencing Sanders’ call for political uprising, is repeating during a series of campaign stops.
When Sanders kicked off his campaign a year ago, he became the Democratic front-runner by raising a record $6 million in his bid’s first 24 hours. But now the Vermonter is running neck and neck with Buttigieg, according to a slew of New Hampshire polls that show roughly half of voters have yet to definitely make up their minds.
Buttigieg, buoyed by a virtual delegate tie with Sanders in this month’s Iowa caucuses, is addressing capacity Granite State crowds from the Connecticut River Valley to the seacoast. The Midwest millennial, noting the Vermonter is promoting Medicare for All and tuition-free public college, is asking voters to consider how the country would pay for such plans.
“It raises the question of whether the American people deserve somebody who can actually deliver math that adds up,” he said over the weekend.
Actor Michael J. Fox, who wed and has owned property in Vermont, introduced Buttigieg to nearly 1,000 people at a Saturday lunch-hour rally at Keene State College.
“I was watching the debate,” the “Back to the Future” star began, “and it occurred to me — I love all the Democratic nominees. But they’re all yelling at me. And I’m sitting there going, ‘Why are you yelling at me, Bernie, what did I do to you?’ They’re all screaming, but Pete isn’t screaming, he’s just talking to me.”
Back when Buttigieg was an 18-year-old high school senior, he won the national John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage” essay contest by writing about the Vermonter.
“I commend Bernie Sanders for giving me an answer to those who say American young people see politics as a cesspool of corruption, beyond redemption,” a teenage Buttigieg wrote.
But the 38-year-old Buttigieg traded barbs with the 78-year-old Sanders all weekend long.
“We cannot run the risk of trying to defeat a fundamentally new challenge by relying on the familiar playbook from before,” Buttigieg said Saturday night at a 10-candidate event in the same Manchester arena set to host President Donald Trump on Monday.
Sanders is countering with his own series of campaign stops. Just hours after Buttigieg claimed the largest Democratic rally in New Hampshire this election cycle with some 1,800 attendees in Nashua, the Vermonter drew nearly 2,000 to a Sunday evening concert at Keene State College featuring the Green Mountain State band Twiddle, Vermont Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and actor Tim Robbins.
“We’re not here to denigrate Pete — he’s running a good campaign,” Sanders said earlier in Plymouth. “But our views are different. Pete has raised campaign contributions from over 40 billionaires.”
In response, Buttigieg, referencing Sanders’ wealth from writing several political books, told CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Well, Bernie’s pretty rich, and I would happily accept a contribution from him.”
Sanders is used to fighting back. Granite State residents recall how 10 days after the U.S. senator launched his 2020 bid here a year ago, Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke drew huge crowds after topping the Vermonter’s first-day fundraising record.
O’Rourke, failing to maintain that support, dropped out of the race last fall.
Locals saw former Vice President Joe Biden go on to break everyone’s fund-raising figures and skyrocket past Sanders as much as two-to-one in New Hampshire polls last spring.
Biden now all but concedes he won’t win Tuesday.
“I took a hit in Iowa and I’ll probably take a hit here,” Biden said Friday on a nationally televised debate. “Traditionally, Bernie won by 20 points last time. And usually it’s the neighboring senators that do well.”
And residents saw Sanders’ fellow progressive U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts edge ahead of her Vermont colleague in several surveys last summer.
Today, Warren, who trailed in third in Iowa, is polling some 10 points behind Buttigieg and Sanders in New Hampshire, just ahead of Biden and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Campaign events in such close-to-Vermont communities as Claremont, Hanover, Keene and Lebanon are drawing many Green Mountain Staters. Stephen Stearns, part of the onetime performing duo Gould & Stearns and founder of Brattleboro’s New England Youth Theatre, traveled to Buttigieg’s rally to learn more about the race.
“Many of us feel our democracy is in real trial,” Stearns said. “I’m on a fact-finding mission.”
The Vermonter wasn’t alone. Fellow attendees have found themselves beside reporters from as far west as the Los Angeles Times and as far east as the Times of London and next to campaign aides including Jeff Weaver, the St. Albans native turned Sanders adviser who watched the Keene rally from the sidelines.
As Weaver predicted to any reporter who asked: “We’re looking to win in New Hampshire.”
