NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton drank bubble tea in Queens, played dominoes in Harlem, and rode the subway in the Bronx. Bill Clinton barnstormed Upstate, hitting as many as four cities in a single day.

In the three weeks leading up to the high-stakes April 19 New York primary, the Clintons campaigned in New York their way – the Big Dog glad-handing across the state and speaking at Baptist churches in the city, the former senator methodically touching all her bases, appearing with every elected official who could help deliver a demographic and drilling down deep on local issues across the state.


On the eve of New York’s critical Democratic primary Tuesday, that nose-to-the-grindstone approach in Clinton’s adopted home state appears to have halted Bernie Sanders in his tracks. After rolling up eight wins in the last nine contests, Sanders trails by double-digits in nearly every public poll in New York. The Vermont senator cautioned Monday that polls have frequently underestimated his support -- and Clinton allies, perhaps downplaying expectations, said they were preparing for a single-digit win. But on Monday, Sanders sounded as if he were preparing his supporters for the prospect of defeat.

"What does it mean if I lose?" Sanders told CBS’ Charlie Rose on Monday. "It means that I lose."

The Clinton New York strategy has been to focus on all three of the state’s big swathes of real estate -- upstate, the suburbs and New York City, areas where Clinton officials like senior strategist Joel Benenson and longtime Democratic operative Mandy Grunwald, who have worked races in New York State before, have experience putting together winning margins.

“You have to remember that the Sanders campaign -- including Sanders himself -- said this is a must-win state for him,” said Benenson. “If they're seeing it that way, we have to make sure that we win the state. We campaigned hard in all parts of the state.”

Across the state, Clinton embraced local issues as if she was once again part of New York's congressional delegation, including an appearance on stage in Manhattan next to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to rally around New York’s new $15-an-hour minimum wage law – even though it opened her up to criticism that she doesn't support a $15 federal minimum wage. In Syracuse, dressed in orange to show her support for the university's basketball team, Clinton talked about creating more working class jobs in upstate New York. In New York City, said longtime Democratic strategist George Arzt, "elected officials say she calls back and thanks them for appearing with her. They're very impressed with how good-humored she is on the campaign trail."

Clinton's courteous style presented a contrast to the Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders, whose mega-rally approach -- 28,000 pumped up New Yorkers came out to see him on Sunday in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park -- was more about harnessing a single, sweeping economic message to build up a grassroots army of volunteers.

“These massive rallies turn people out and then they move them to canvassing. They’re phone-banking and door-knocking like crazy,” said Bill Lipton, state director for the Working Families Party, which is backing the Vermont senator. “It feels like there’s a volunteer army that’s out there and the Sanders campaign really has these tools that enable people to engage.”

The question New York Democrats were discussing heading into Tuesday's primary was not whether Clinton will win her adopted home state, but by how much – and whether a single-digit victory here will allow her to project herself beyond the convention, without appearing dismissive of Sanders’ candidacy and his supporters. “The stakes for Clinton are largely perceptual, but it’s also about how she is able to consolidate her candidacy prior to the convention,” said David Birdsell, dean of the Baruch College School of Public Affairs. “It’s about what the quality of her support looks like going into whatever negotiations with the Sanders camp as she inevitably will.”

Clinton allies concede that the campaign was unprepared for a grueling fight leading up to the New York primary. “I don’t think that we looked at New York as being competitive,” said Clinton donor Jay Jacobs, the Democratic Party chairman in Nassau County, who has helped the campaign by overseeing 27 congressional district coordinators across the state. “When it turned out to be, they had to ramp up pretty quickly.”

Sanders allies appeared to have been planning longer for a fight here. As far back as September, New Yorkers registered as members of the Working Families Party received letters encouraging them to change their voter registration to Democrat ahead of the October deadline in order to vote for Sanders in New York’s closed primary, WFP officials said.

Part of playing organizational catch-up was that both Clintons worked harder than anyone expected. “She surprised everybody with how intensely she and President Clinton campaigned,” said Jacobs. “I’ve talked to upstate chairs that were hoping to get one or the other up there -- and they got both.”

Clinton’s day on Monday was like the go-for-broke finale of a fireworks display -- she met with hospital workers in Yonkers, unionized car wash workers in Queens, LGBT supporters in Manhattan and made pit stops at ice cream parlors and food courts along the way with Sen. Chuck Schumer by her side. She ended the day at the Fitzpatrick Hotel in Manhattan, wooing the Irish, with Bill Clinton at her side.

"I am hoping to do really well tomorrow,” Clinton told supporters phone-banking at an LGBT center in the West Village. “I am hoping to wrap up the Democratic nomination. But! But. But I’m not taking anything for granted. I gotta quickly add that before anybody has the wrong impression.”

Clinton also appeared to go granular and specific when it came to her media strategy. Sanders outspent Clinton on television by $2 million. But in the media capital of the world, Clinton worked niche media, calling into black radio shows like WWPR-FM’s “The Breakfast Club” and giving a sit-down to the Amsterdam News editorial board, which delivered to her its endorsement the next day.

“To a large extent it seems Clinton is replaying her 2000 and 2006 playbooks -- relatively small events,” said Birdsell. “It's a better way for her to draw contrasts with Sanders. His campaign is about the biggest issues possible. Everything is about corporate greed and inequality; it's clear that's not true if you're trying to sell yogurt in upstate New York. Sanders is not adapting to New York, he's essentially got the same campaign arguments that he had in Wisconsin and Wyoming.”

Longtime political observers agreed her strategy was reminiscent of her 2000 Senate run, where her challenge was convincing wary New Yorkers she was truly concerned about a state she had never lived in.

“She was an incredibly dogged senator who knew coming into office that a conspicuous constituency would be watching to make sure she focused on New York issues,” said Democratic strategist Stu Loeser, who served as the longtime press secretary to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “She showed in the last three weeks an ability to remember that. She knows the state and is able to use it without seeming like a know it all smartest kid in the class.”

