Bernie Sanders reported bringing in $73 million in 2015 and an additional $20 million in January. | AP Photo Bernie's bucks bury Clinton in New Hampshire The Vermont senator is outspending Hillary Clinton by more than 3-to-1 on television.

RINDGE, N.H. — Once thought of as a scrappy underdog, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has transformed into a spending juggernaut, blowing out Hillary Clinton on the television airwaves in New Hampshire and positioned to last far deeper into the primary campaign than anyone could have imagined when he first announced his bid.

On the heels of a record $20 million fundraising haul in January — $5 million more than Clinton, who was expected to set the pace — the Vermont senator has outspent her here by a margin of more than 3-to-1 in television ads. According to an analysis of media buyer data, Sanders has spent $2.8 million to Clinton’s $800,000 in the final two weeks before the New Hampshire primary.


To some degree, the spending disparity reflects the priorities of each campaign. Sanders’ operation has focused on pulling out all the stops to guarantee a do-or-die victory after his narrow loss in Iowa. Clinton, who is feeling the brunt of it, hasn’t chosen to invest as heavily in a state where she has trailed in every single public poll so far in 2016 — more than two dozen in total.

Recent polls have shown her trailing by double-digits.

“In New Hampshire — which we understand is going to be the linchpin for the nomination for us, and we need the momentum out of the state — we decided to double down on advertising,” confirmed Tad Devine, Sanders’ chief strategist. “When the money began to come in, and the resources, to allow us to run a truly national campaign — combined with our decision to hold onto the money until we got to the voting — it gave us an opportunity to get to this [big-spending] point."

It’s also a sign of the eye-popping amounts of money Sanders has been able to raise online, a steady stream of cash that could sustain his campaign for weeks — maybe even months, if he can post a few early wins against Clinton.

“A huge win for [the Sanders campaign] here is pretty critical for the momentum that they’re counting on out of Nevada and South Carolina, and going onto March 1,” explained Sean Downey, the New Hampshire political director for President Barack Obama in 2012 and the Northeast director of the Ready for Hillary PAC before Clinton declared her candidacy. “So it makes sense for them to spend any dollar they can to make the margin big enough."

Sanders — a next-door neighbor senator, as Clinton and her aides frequently note — and the former secretary of state have built up their field organizations for months, with Clinton getting a head-start by placing a team on the ground as soon as she launched her campaign in April. That organizing battle has escalated rapidly since then: the Sanders camp, for example, has 108 paid staffers on the ground and 18 offices in the state. Clinton’s team wouldn’t provide its number of paid staffers, but it has 11 local offices and eight get-out-the-vote centers. Plus, dozens of staffers from her Brooklyn, N.Y., headquarters came north to help the New Hampshire team after Iowa’s caucuses.

Local Democrats frequently say the operations rival each other.

“I’m not sure in terms of the ground game the money is really visible,” explained former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Kathy Sullivan, a Clinton supporter. “It definitely is on television."

Sanders reported bringing in $73 million in 2015 and an additional $20 million in January, numbers that the Clinton camp was not expecting to have to combat from a primary challenger — and which Clinton fundraisers expect to rise after he wins on Tuesday, under the assumption that droves of excited Sanders backers will chip in after the news is official. Sanders ended December with $28 million in cash on hand.

And even though he only started advertising in New Hampshire in November — compared to Clinton’s long play of going up in the state since August — he poured in $8.5 million overall to her $7.6 million, according to media buyers.

The strategy, said Devine, was simple: backload the ads to flood the airwaves in the state that Sanders’ top advisors view as a must-win. And since Clinton and her husband have a history in New Hampshire, he explained, the heavy spending was not just about running up the score, it was also an insurance policy.

“We do not take New Hampshire for granted at all, we recognize that we’re up against the entire political establishment,” he said, repeating Sanders’ standard line. “This is the fourth Clinton for president campaign there, she beat Barack Obama there despite being down by double-digits heading out of Iowa."

Devine said the campaign’s thinking was also colored by the opportunity to build a presence in Massachusetts — the southern New Hampshire media market is based out of Boston — which is one of the early March-voting states that Sanders is targeting.

Sanders’ heavy expenditures and frequent boasts about his fundraising hauls are viewed by Clinton allies as signs that he’s investing in a long-term delegate-collection strategy that extends at least through March. In response, Clinton is dispatching her Iowa staffers to March-voting states and increasingly spending campaign money to organize in those places.

But for the coming two days, Clinton’s team professes to have its eyes squarely on New Hampshire, amping up the get-out-the-vote program as part of a belief that even a smaller-than-expected loss in the state could propel her back squarely into the front-runner’s seat.