By Anne Gearan, John Wagner and Abby Phillip, washingtonpost.com
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination turned sharply Wednesday into a battle for Hispanic and African American voters, who are expected to play a decisive role in a long list of upcoming contests in Southern and Western states.
Although former secretary of state Hillary Clinton enjoys a dramatic advantage over Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) among minorities, his resounding victory Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary gives him a shot of momentum that he hopes could turn that tide.
Making clear how crucial minority support will be, Sanders’s first stop after leaving New Hampshire was in Harlem, where he met Wednesday morning with the Rev. Al Sharpton and Benjamin Jealous, the former head of the NAACP.
“If the elections were held today in both those states, we would lose,” Sanders said in an interview, referring to Nevada and South Carolina. “But I think we have momentum, I think we have a shot to win, and if we don’t win, we’ll do a lot better than people think we will.”
Swamped by a wave of populist support for Sanders in New Hampshire, Clinton’s campaign signaled Wednesday that the spectacular loss will not throw her off a careful course set months ago that relies in part on strong support among minorities.
With a blast of announcements about endorsements, travel plans and more, the Clinton campaign sought to turn to subjects — gun control, criminal justice, the water crisis in Flint, Mich. — that speak to African American and blue-collar voters in the states that vote next.
“There is no change to our core argument, our plan, and you saw that in what we are saying as we look to the states that vote in March,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon said Wednesday.
The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, predicted that once voters in the next round of nominating states tune in, his message of economic fairness will resonate regardless of race. Sanders has argued that many of his initiatives — including a higher minimum wage, paid family leave and free college tuition — should be more appealing to African Americans and Latinos, given the greater share of economically struggling families in those communities.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said that internal polling is starting to show movement in Sanders’s direction among younger voters of all backgrounds in upcoming states.
“Younger voters are clearly the strongest group for Senator Sanders, and this is sort of reminiscent of the Obama campaign — where younger voters were the president’s strongest bloc as well — across racial lines,” Weaver said.
Clinton had no public appearances Wednesday. She and Sanders meet for another Democratic debate on Thursday in Milwaukee. Clinton is expected to strike a more aspirational, optimistic tone that is a tacit acknowledgment that simply knocking down Sanders’s ideas as unrealistic was not enough.
A chief complaint among Clinton backers appalled by her 22-point loss Tuesday in a state with long and fond ties to the Clinton political franchise is that she isn’t getting through to voters. Exit polling and other data show that Clinton did not connect in New Hampshire — not with men, not with women, not with the young and not with blue-collar voters.
he next two Democratic contests will come in Nevada, where 30 percent of the Democratic electorate in 2008 was black or Hispanic, and in South Carolina, where 55 percent of the 2008 Democratic electorate was black. In March, another slew of Southern states with large African American populations will vote.
Clinton has long been thought to have a Southern “firewall” — an insurmountable advantage with minority voters. Sanders has never demonstrated an ability to attract minorities; his strong showing in Iowa and his trouncing of Clinton in New Hampshire were in states, like his home state of Vermont, where more than 90 percent of the population is white.
An NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll taken in January in South Carolina showed Clinton with the support of 74 percent of black voters, compared with 17 percent for Sanders.
Tad Devine, a strategist for the Sanders campaign, said that Sanders need not win a majority of black voters in South Carolina in order to put together a coalition with white voters to beat Clinton.
In South Carolina, the Sanders campaign is paying “dozens” of canvassers $15 an hour to go door to door, primarily in the black community, to pitch his candidacy, Weaver said. Cornel West, the noted black scholar who has fallen out of favor with many African Americans because of his sharp criticism of President Obama, also has campaigned extensively in South Carolina for Sanders. Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, another Obama critic, has helped spread Sanders’s message in appearances, online discussions and social-media posts.
Clinton has been quietly organizing in the state since April and has hosted 1,900 grass-roots events. During a recent weekend of campaigning, aides say the campaign contacted 100,000 voters through canvassing and phone banks. Mothers who have lost children to gun violence, including some who were shot by police officers, are planning to campaign on her behalf in South Carolina and other Southern states, and celebrities will be enlisted to visit barbershops and beauty salons to talk up Clinton’s campaign.
“We’re not fighting to win a certain percentage of the vote, we’re fighting to earn the support of the community, we’re fighting for every last vote,” said Marlon Marshall, Clinton’s director of states and political engagement. “She has a multi-decade history of fighting for the African American community. Throughout this entire campaign we’ve seen her go into these communities, have these conversations, talking about issues that matter to the African American community. She’s not just now doing this, she’s done this her whole life, and that’s an important point to make.”
Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) predicted that Clinton’s loss in New Hampshire would not shake her support in his state.
“It won’t matter a whole lot,” he said even before the polls had closed in New Hampshire on Tuesday. He said there have been some signs of support for Sanders on college campuses around the state. “There’s not been a big surge. The reliable primary voters that I know don’t seem to have shifted at all.”
