Probably because he has the writing on the wall, Bernie Sanders has just made a big change to his ground game in the crucial Democratic primary state of New Hampshire.
For months now, and especially since Elizabeth Warren’s performance in the 3rd Democratic Debate, longtime supporters of Bernie have been warning him that he could lose the New Hampshire primary.
I guess he is now listening to those concerns. On Sunday, Sanders replaced the director of his presidential campaign operations in the New Hampshire. New Hampshire as you know, holds the first primary in the race for the White House
The campaign broke the news to more than 40 members of Sanders’ steering committee. Shannon Jackson, who made the announcement, will replace Joe Caiazzo as the state director. Jackson ran Sanders’ 2018 Senate re-election campaign and was a senior adviser on the independent senator’s 2016 White House bid as well as the current campaign.
“Thank God the campaign finally figured out they had to make serious changes in New Hampshire,” a longtime Sanders backer who attended the meeting told Fox News.
The move comes as some Sanders supporters in New Hampshire are looking over their shoulders at Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – the other progressive standard-bearer in the record-setting field of Democratic presidential candidates.
Conflicting Polls
Recent polls in New Hampshire have been inconsistent. A recent live telephone operator survey from the Boston Herald and Franklin Pierce University indicated Sanders at 29 percent, overall front-runner and former Vice President Joe Biden at 21 percent and Elizabeth Warren at 19 percent.
But another recent poll suggested a three-way tie between the three top-tier contenders and a yet a third suggested Sanders lagging painfully behind Biden and Warren.
Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement released to the press on Sunday that “we’ve built a great team in NH and are in a really strong position there. The campaign is now building out our operations to include Massachusetts and Maine state directors as we increase our focus in Super Tuesday states. We are running a 50 state campaign, taking no state or voters for granted and expanding our operations to secure the Democratic nomination.”
Caiazzo was moved to one of those Super Tuesday states – Massachusetts. Caiazzo served as the Sanders 2016 campaign’s state director in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Is New Hampshire a Must Win for Bernie?
While Bernie himself has indicated the contrary, a well-known New Hampshire based political scientist says that the Granite State is a “must win” for Warren or Bernie if either of them is to get the nomination. “New Hampshire is a must-win-or-place state for Senators Sanders and Warren,” said Wayne Lesperance, the vice president of academic affairs and a political science professor at New England College.
“For both candidates, there is no better home-field advantage in the early states than the Granite State.
