Minnesota, long accustomed to being a presidential primary season also-ran, is suddenly emerging as one of the most contentious and competitive fronts on Super Tuesday.

With its history of producing progressive heroes, the state is taking shape as one of Bernie Sanders’ top targets on March 1, the centerpiece of his plan to offset Hillary Clinton’s expected victories across the South.


Both campaigns are pouring in staff and resources. Television airtime is being purchased. For Sanders, who has drawn massive crowds at earlier events in the Twin Cities, Minnesota represents a prime opportunity to steal some of Clinton’s limelight on a day in which she figures to roll up her first significant batch of victories. Even her allies concede as much.

“I would give a slight edge to Bernie right now, but I think both campaigns have been putting a lot of resources in here,” said Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman Ken Martin, a Clinton supporter. “In 2008, the campaigns weren’t putting any resources here until a few weeks before the caucus. But the fact that they’ve been investing in organizations here since August — or in the fall for Bernie — is an indication that they both see Minnesota as very important."

Minnesota – along with Colorado, another sizable Super Tuesday caucus state -- has been central to Sanders’ projected path to the nomination ever since his senior aides met to map it out at their Capitol Hill townhouse headquarters shortly before the senator announced his candidacy last spring.

Both candidates made their pitches to a crowd of some 4,000 Democratic stalwarts here in St. Paul Friday night at the fifth-annual DFL Humphrey-Mondale dinner, named for former vice presidents Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, two of the state’s liberal lions.

Sanders, who hustled over to the dinner from a nearby forum focused on “the black experience in America” that turned testy, received a warm welcome, especially for his tribute to the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone. But he also got a healthy smattering of people yelling “No!” when he asked if the Clinton-friendly crowd was ready for a political revolution.

Sanders, his voice raspy from days of campaigning, offered his full corporate and Wall Street-bashing stump speech in the aircraft-hangar like event space, while being careful to throw out some hugs to President Barack Obama for improvements in the economy.

Clinton who arrived from South Carolina, received a more raucous welcome and also spent part of her remarks remembering Wellstone while offering her own stump speech attacks on Wall Street and corporate tax “inversion” deals.

The crowd at the dinner featured plenty of Sanders’ supporters but more appeared to back Clinton, including many of the speakers who warmed up the partisan crowd, underscoring the former secretary of state’s institutional advantage in Minnesota.

“I’m supporting Hillary Clinton but it’s not because I don’t love Bernie Sanders,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who declined to offer his Sanders impression despite heavy urging from the audience.

Minneapolis was the site of one of Sanders’ first mega-rallies — he drew 3,000 people just after launching his campaign in May -- giving his team an early sign that its plan could work. The state figures prominently enough in the campaign’s thinking that Sanders even stepped away from the Iowa trail shortly before the Feb. 1 caucuses to appear at a pair of events in St. Paul and Duluth that reached over 20,000 Minnesotans.

The Sanders campaign brain trust views Minnesota’s progressive, largely white electorate as perfect for the Vermont senator’s pitch – and the caucus format and potential delegate haul (77 in all) makes it critical to Sanders’ strategy of amassing delegates in caucus states where the advantages of his highly-motivated supporters are amplified.

The Clinton operation recognizes that and is moving aggressively to box Sanders in. By their calculus, even a tie is a win for Clinton – if Sanders can’t grab the vast majority of delegates from a glove-fitting electorate like Minnesota, they believe, he won’t be able to catch up to her since her totals will be fueled by super delegates and deep support of minority voters.

Both campaigns have built up robust operations in the state, with Clinton sending a full-time state director there in the late summer, and Sanders installing the former executive director of his home-state Vermont Democratic Party as his in-state lead. Neither campaign would share figures on their staffing levels, but both sides transferred campaign workers from Iowa after that state’s caucuses earlier this month — and both teams have bought air time in the state to plaster Minnesota TV with campaign ads before Super Tuesday, a noteworthy development for a state where presidential campaigns tend to put more of an emphasis on paid mail than television.

“Mostly, when we look at it we say to ourselves: ‘with a little more time, how much better could we be doing?,’” said Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, one of the two members of Congress backing Sanders, adding that the candidate had explained to him how important the state was to keeping his campaign’s momentum going on Super Tuesday. “It’s really on fire for him."

If Sanders can win a large portion of the 77 delegates at stake in the country’s second-largest caucus state, explained his chief strategist Tad Devine, it would put him in a strong position to split Super Tuesday with Clinton, who needs wide wins in Nevada and South Carolina before then to allay widespread concerns about the health of her campaign.

A muscular performance in Minnesota, added another Sanders aide, would go a long way toward proving Sanders’ appeal isn’t a regional phenomenon, given that he’s also targeting Massachusetts, Colorado, and Oklahoma on Super Tuesday and many of Clinton’s delegates that day are likely to come from Southern states.

The fight will likely come down to voters like Abbey Harris and Jayne Piepenburg.

Harris, a 28-year old student and part-time waitress who suffers from diabetes, has fallen in love with Sanders' promises of free universal health care and free college. "I really like what he says about health care, which is really expensive for me right now," said Harris on Friday before a big DFL dinner here at which both candidates were to speak. "Plus I've been in college for seven years now and I've got $48,000 in debt."

Piepenburg, one of Harris' customers who was sipping chardonnay with two friends before heading into the event, said she liked Sanders but didn't find his promises plausible or his prospects for winning in the fall very strong.

"I'm really strong for Hillary, she has the experience and she can win," said Piepenberg, a 58 year-old accountant. "Plus it's just time for a woman. We are of the generation who remember what it was like to be the only woman in a meeting. Some of these younger women voters just take for granted the opportunities they have now."

Pat Berry, also 58 and an accountant, nodded along with her friend's comments. "I'm glad Bernie has pulled Hillary to the left but she's got the experience and the intelligence and she is electable."

Harris wasn't having it. "Her just being a woman and an authority figure doesn't really do anything for me," she said. "I like what Bernie has to say."

Clinton’s Brooklyn, N.Y.-based campaign team has recognized their rival's strategy here, said people close to her planning, and they are expecting a toss-up race in a state where their organization is widely seen as more professionalized, but where Sanders has proven the ability to turn out massive numbers of supporters.

“One of the key areas to look at is the Iron Range, to see whether Sanders’ support among white working class people that showed up in New Hampshire follows here,” explained RT Rybak, the neutral former Minneapolis mayor who is now a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, referring to the state’s northeast. “He, on paper, should do very well in Duluth, and not very well in the Iron Range."

Minnesota’s long history of choosing grassroots-powered insurgent progressives – like the late Sen. Paul Wellstone -- stands to work in Sanders’ favor, said Rybak. “This was a great state for Obama and for [Howard] Dean, and [Bill] Bradley before that. So this should be a place where a candidate like Bernie Sanders should do well."

Clinton, meanwhile, has leaned heavily on the state’s establishment: she has the backing of Gov. Mark Dayton, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Franken, Reps. Rick Nolan, Tim Walz, and Betty McCollum, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and a slew of other local leaders who are mobilizing their networks on her behalf.

The former secretary has also rolled out the support of former Vice President Mondale, a Minnesota favorite son, who introduced her when she delivered a high-profile speech on terrorism policy in Minneapolis late last year. She has repeatedly brought up progressive hero Wellstone on the campaign trail in recent weeks when defending her progressive credentials against Sanders’ attempts to downplay them.

But, said Ellison, while that kind of backing from the so-called establishment that Sanders rails against undoubtedly helps, it’s not certain how it will translate on caucus day.

“There’s no doubt she has the folks who’ve been a part of politics for quite a long time. She’s got the folks who’ve got a little more institutional influence, if you know what I mean. They’re good people, they’re friends of mine,” said the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

But “Minnesota is a very, very interesting political environment. [The] people are independent, they think for themselves. We’re a state that’s had Jesse Ventura [as governor]. And they’re passionate. This is the state of Hubert Humphrey, this is the state of Paul Wellstone. I don’t think I have some big wand to wave, and I don’t think anyone else does."



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