Étiquettes
Alaska, Bernie Sanders, Elections Hawaii, Hawaii 2016, Hillary Clinton, Washington 2016
Alaska, Hawaii and Washington state offer Sanders a chance to gain ground Saturday against Hillary Clinton.
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Bernie Sanders looks poised for a big day Saturday as he and Hillary Clinton watch for the results of caucuses in a trio of Western states that represent the last Democratic contests before a brief 10-day break in voting.
Washington state — the big prize with its 101 delegates — is likely to fall to Sanders, though Clinton’s campaign has been working to minimize his advantage there as it looks to stop him from gaining too much ground in the delegate race.
Alaska and Hawaii, two far smaller caucuses that also look favorable for Sanders, were set to caucus on Saturday, as well.
If Sanders can pull out a large margin in Washington, his campaign will get a burst of momentum — and it will likely be accompanied by the fundraising bump that the Vermont senator typically gets when he wins big. Still, Sanders’ performance is unlikely to cut too far into Clinton’s overall delegate lead.
Saturday’s results figure to mark Sanders’ best moment in weeks, as he looks to turn a string of strong performances in March — starting with runaway wins in Idaho and Utah on Tuesday — into a spark that pushes him closer to Clinton, despite her lead of roughly 300 pledged delegates. Even so, his bid to gain momentum heading into April was dealt a considerable blow by Clinton’s convincing win in much larger Arizona, the biggest delegate haul of the week.
While the front-runner held no public campaign events during Saturday’s voting — and had none scheduled at all for the Easter weekend — Sanders was rallying in Madison, Wisconsin, another progressive state that is set to host the next primary, on April 5.
Sanders held a series of last-minute rallies in Washington the night before, finishing with a 15,000-person event at Seattle’s 50,000-plus seat baseball stadium, Safeco Field.
Clinton was the underdog in Washington, a deep-blue state where her campaign opened nine offices to Sanders’ seven. He outspent her on advertisements and spent more time there, long recognizing that its liberal politics created a prime opportunity for him to pick up a significant share of its delegates, even as Clinton picked up endorsements from most of the state’s leading Democrats.
Seattle, the largest city in the state, has long appeared to be prime Sanders territory. In a progressive-minded city that elected a socialist to the city council last year, the Vermont senator also grabbed the endorsement of the Seattle Times — by far the biggest paper to back him — early in March.
« Don’t let anybody tell you that Hillary Clinton is the strongest Democratic candidate to take on the Republicans. It is not true, » he said Friday, telling the Washington crowd that the state would lead the country to Sanders’ much-touted « political revolution. »
Neither candidate has visited Alaska, though Clinton had a local headquarters in Anchorage while Sanders’ wife Jane campaigned there on Friday. With just 16 delegates at stake and no reliable public polling in place, the 49th state’s caucuses were something of an afterthought for both campaigns.
Hawaii and its 25 delegates, however, was slightly more front and center: one of Sanders’ top surrogates, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, worked to swing the state in his favor with campaign appearances and television ads focused on veterans. Clinton’s camp countered by opening two offices in the state and organizing with Sen. Mazie Hirono.