Sanders surge forms backdrop for Clinton S.C. visit Her stop in the first-in-the-South primary state is exposing her to a dose of Bernie-mentum.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — This humid Southern city just a few miles from the Atlantic coast is far from Bernie Sanders’ home turf.

But his shadow seemed to follow Hillary Clinton as she made her second visit to South Carolina since declaring her presidential candidacy.


Clinton’s Wednesday stop in the first-in-the-South primary state exposed her to an unwelcome dose of Bernie-mentum, giving the Democratic front-runner a first-hand look at the grass-roots fervor Sanders is generating on the left.

Over the weekend, the state chapter of the AFL-CIO jumped the gun and effectively backed the Vermont senator’s candidacy before being forced to walk back its message. Last night, on the eve of Clinton’s arrival, Sanders’ campaign said it had to change the venue for his upcoming swing through Charleston due to overwhelming local interest. That announcement — which pointedly noted that the new venue is a high school gym located on President Street — came just hours before Clinton unveiled a new plan to combat youth unemployment through tax credits for businesses who hire apprentices.

The former secretary of state continues to maintain a commanding lead over Sanders in most national and early state polling — including in South Carolina, where Sanders has no permanent staff. But the liberal challenger has been gaining on her in New Hampshire polls, and the energy and overflow crowds of his recent early-state events are attracting notice.

Clinton’s visit and policy rollout come during an early-voting state tour that follows her weekend rally on New York’s Roosevelt Island: She met with community leaders in Santee, South Carolina before a speech at Trident Technical College here in North Charleston in the afternoon. In the evening, she’s attending a fundraiser hosted by a Charleston attorney.

At the college event, Clinton laid out a plan to provide businesses with tax credits when they hire apprentices.

“It is time to be able to plan for the future in a way that gives you that path forward, so I support high-quality job training programs. On-the-job training can raise pay by thousands of dollars per year, apprenticeships even more,” Clinton said. “This should be a no-brainer.”

The release of Clinton’s youth employment plan comes less than two weeks after Sanders unveiled his own youth jobs bill, which proposes $5.5 billion in new funding for states and local governments who employ young citizens.

There’s little evidence to indicate that Sanders’ recent surge reflects a serious long-term problem for Clinton, who remains the overwhelming front-runner for the nomination. But the timing coincides with a trade debate that has divided Democrats in Washington, and left organized labor — an important constituency for her — unsettled by her ambiguous stance.

“At the center of the issue is whether she defies labor,” explained a national Democratic strategist who is close to the Clinton campaign, pointing to the stark split between the labor unions and President Barack Obama. “There’s a very careful algorithm here about how to stay with Obama and how to differentiate from him, and this feels like a differentiator. But it needs clarity.”

Clinton has declined to strongly weigh in as supporting or opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that she helped negotiate as secretary of state, or on granting Obama fast-track authority, but she said over the weekend that the White House should now work with House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, to improve the deal.

Nonetheless, elements of organized labor have raised questions about her trade position — which the campaign insists is clear. Those questions formed the backdrop for the South Carolina’s AFL-CIO’s Saturday resolution urging its national group to support Sanders. The national organization later instructed the state group to walk back its statement — which didn’t mention the issue specifically — because it didn’t have the authority to deliver it.

Erin McKee, the state AFL-CIO president, told POLITICO that trade has become the hot topic of conversation among South Carolina Democrats, even beyond labor. “People are making calls and sending emails” in a letter-writing campaign opposing the deal, she explained, adding that Sanders’ strong stance against the agreement has helped his in-state popularity, particularly among union members.

While AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka said in April that any candidate who wants the group’s backing should oppose fast-track, the AFL-CIO’s political director on Tuesday said it would not be applied as a litmus test for the endorsement.

Clinton praised the role unions have played in promoting job training during her speech here, but she did not mention trade and was not pressed on it during the brief audience question-and-answer session.

“We’ve done enough for those who’ve already been successful,” she said at one point during the speech aimed at young voters, explaining her support for programs that help youth and minorities. “I want to be a president for both the successful and the struggling, and right now the struggling need it most.”

Clinton’s team has said from the start of the campaign that it expected a primary challenger to catch fire over the summer, though many staffers at first pointed to former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley as the likeliest candidate for that role. But O’Malley has mostly stuck to New Hampshire and Iowa and remains mired in the single digits in polls. Sanders, meanwhile, has traveled more widely — including to multiple South Carolina stops — and picked up support from many backers of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive favorite who isn’t running.

Clinton has declined to publicly mention her rivals on the campaign trail, instead aiming most of her ire at Republicans while working to clarify her policy platform through a series of tightly controlled policy rollouts.

Still, her rivals continue to pressure her on the trade issue while she declines to take a formal stance on whether Obama should have fast-track authority.

“When you get down to voting in 2016, I doubt there’s going to be a great deal of conversation about the trade package. It’s just not something people will talk about that much,” said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane — who has raised money for Hillary Clinton and who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House — nodding to the candidate’s lack of a definitive statement on the issue. “If you’re a candidate in a long race, you’re like a championship boxer. If you can avoid taking a hit, you don’t take the hit.”