What did Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson mean when he told reporters that Bernie Sanders would “campaign like a Brooklynite” for the New York primary next month?



Maybe it was just an innocuous reference to Sanders’ birthplace, which, unless you’re hard of hearing, you probably know is Brooklyn. Or you might think it was a straightforward compliment – Brooklyn has somehow become known the world over as the hip borough, with a booming creative class and cultural scenes galore. Or perhaps it was about politics: not a few people snark about the People’s Republic of Brooklyn, a nod to the borough’s long and deep history of political radicalism, mostly on the left – a milieu where the socialist senator (for his adopted Vermont) might feel especially at home.



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But if you know Benenson’s background – the famous pollster is from Queens, the next borough north of Brooklyn – it seems obvious that the comment was meant as an insult. After all, it was done in the course of a campaign phone call with journalists, and Benenson went on to say, Clinton is “going to campaign like a senator who represented the state for eight years and lived here for 16.” We were all left stroking our hipster beards, munching on our artisanal brain food and turning down our vinyl to think better. Why would Clinton’s campaign be insulting Brooklyn?



I should say here, by way of full disclosure, that Brooklyn is my adopted home, and I just love the damn place, every inch of it, from Vinegar Hill to Floyd Bennet Field, Greenpoint to Fort Hamilton. And I like Queens, too. I mean, where else would I go to the airport? I even went to a new bar a few weeks ago in Astoria, Queens. It was nice! Reminded me of Brooklyn, but with fewer good-looking people.



Nonetheless, Benenson’s apparent insult is a bit rich. Clinton’s claims to be a real representative of New Yorkers are a bit dubious. Clinton and her husband, the former president Bill Clinton, bought a place in Chappaqua, in well-heeled suburban Westchester County, in 1999, laying the legal resident foundations of Clinton’s Senate win the following year. With that, this political animal was back in her natural habitat – Washington DC – where she would spend the vast majority of those 16 years as a supposed New Yorker, an eight-year run as senator (two of which were spent campaigning for president the first time around) then as Obama’s secretary of state during his first term.



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One only needs to hear Clinton speak in her distinctly midwest cadence to know that she’s not exactly from New York; she was, in fact, raised in the Chicago suburbs. But then her accent – or accents, with an ‘s’ – claims a lot of hometowns: she first adopted a southern intonation when Bill was campaigning to be governor of Arkansas, then later when her first presidential run swung through southern states, and again last year.



Sanders, in contrast, has had an rigidly Brooklyn accent for his entire political career. Sanders tried to run for political office early in his time in Vermont, where he’d settled in 1968, but didn’t succeed until 1981. He then won three terms as mayor of Burlington, the state’s biggest city, before winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1990 and moving to the Senate in 2007. It’s a little less carpetbaggery.



Here, however, is what’s most awkward about the Clinton camp’s “Brooklynite” remark: the former secretary of state decided to place her campaign headquarters in ... downtown Brooklyn. Upon moving in, the campaign released a political ad asking: “So, how DO Brooklyn residents feel about their neighbor?” The overwhelming response, in the nearby chichi neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, was love. What’s more, New York mayor Bill De Blasio – a stalwart Clinton supporter during this presidential race and the last one – was a longtime resident of Brooklyn before moving into Gracie Mansion.



“I assume the phrase ‘campaigning like a Brooklynite’ is a compliment,” De Blasio said at a press conference, when asked about Benenson’s remark.

Benenson, for his part, tweeted: “Of course ‘Brooklynite’ was a compliment! I’m an outer borough guy from Queens and we’re all proud New Yorkers”.



Note the reference to the outer boroughs, which means everything in New York City save the island of Manhattan. Clinton, despite her campaign headquarters, isn’t exactly an outer boroughs person. She’s a Manhattan person, with connections among the wealthy denizens of the Upper East Side, the types who have jobs in Midtown banks and on Wall Street, and Harlem, where her husband’s behemoth foundation is based.



Clinton’s Manhattan connections are not uncontroversial in today’s Democratic politics: she has boasted of her ties to Wall Street, which have filled her political coffers and proved a windfall in six-figure speech payments for the Clinton Foundation after her time as secretary of state.



When asked about the huge donations and payments, Clinton clumsily invoked the September 11 attacks. “I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked,” she said. “We were attacked in downtown Manhattan, where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild”.



That’s all nice, really, but a lot of other people – many of whom live in the outer boroughs, including much of Brooklyn and not Manhattan or Chappaqua – are still struggling. The Clinton camp would do well to underscore Benenson’s revisionist take on Brooklynite campaigning. After all, by population, Brooklyn would, by itself, be the fourth largest city in America, with some two-and-a-half million residents. Despite a comfortable lead in the polls, Clinton wouldn’t want to run the risk of losing any votes in a primary battle that has been closer than anyone expected.