Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. walks past a mural depicting a mining scene as he arrives to speak with members of local Native American Tribal Councils and with steelworker and union members before a campaign rally at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. laughs as he jokes with members of local Native American Tribal Councils at the start of their meeting at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks with steelworkers and union members at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Wearing a union jacket that was a present from steelworkers he met, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks with his wife Jane Sanders as they wait to enter a campaign rally backstage at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and his wife, Jane Sanders, wave as they arrive to a campaign rally at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)



Debbie Horskey of Chisholm, Minn., right, holds a lighted Bernie sign next to her son Jacob Horskey, 10, while they watch Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speak at a campaign rally at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks at a campaign rally at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The crowd listens as Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks at a campaign rally at Hibbing High School in Hibbing, Minn., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

HIBBING, Minn. — Shortly after striding on to the stage of the storied Hibbing High School auditorium Friday morning, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders honed in on the topic on so many northern Minnesotans’ minds.

“I do understand what’s going on up here on the Iron Range, about the loss of many, many, many hundreds of good paying jobs because cheap Chinese steel is being dumped in the United States of America,” said the Vermont senator.

In the upper reaches of Minnesota, those mining jobs — the lifeblood of these cities and towns closer to Canada than the Twin Cities — are scarce. Many workers are idled, and their unemployment is running out.

For the Range, both Sanders and rival Hillary Clinton know, the candidate who voters believe can better handle that economic devastation wrought by international trade will do best in Tuesday’s caucuses.

“The Iron Range is really central to the narrative that’s going on in this country about industrial towns and about working people and some of the issues in this economy,” said former state Rep. Joe Radinovich, of Ironton. Radinovich, now managing Eighth District U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan’s re-election campaign, waited outside in the cold with hundreds of others Friday to get inside the Sanders rally. Radinovich is neutral in the presidential race.

WORKING THE NORTHLAND

Both Sanders and Clinton have been trying to make that narrative work in Minnesota. Both campaigns have field offices in Duluth and volunteers spread across the north.

Friday was Sanders’ second trip up north this year. In January, he attracted at least 5,000 to a rally in Duluth.

On Friday, in front of a crowd that left many of the auditorium’s 1,800 seats unfilled, Sanders went on at length on”disastrous trade policies,” which he said Clinton backs and he does not.

“I like Hillary. I like Bernie better at this stage. Bernie thinks more like I do and he says it out loud,” said Marty Henry, 58, a retired miner from Britt, Minn. and one of several who brought up former president Bill Clinton’s NAFTA support.

“Can he fix it?” Henry wondered of Sanders. “I don’t know.”

On Friday, Sanders, who promotes free higher education, single-payer health care and a vastly different trade policy, said his goals may be outside the mainstream but promised he could fix what ails the country.

“In my heart of hearts, I simply do not believe that establishment politics and establishment economics is going to do what has to be done for working families and the middle class,” Sanders said in the auditorium, wearing a United Steelworkers Local 1938 jacket that miners gave him in a private meeting Friday morning.

His sales pitch did not work on everyone there.

“It was interesting. I’m still a Hillary supporter, but I just wanted to check it out,” said Dawn Hulmer, a 63-year-old postal worker who drove north from Duluth on Friday morning to see Sanders.

Clinton has not visited northern Minnesota this year, although she is sending her daughter, Chelsea, to a Duluth organizing event on the eve of the caucus. But that doesn’t mean the region is off her radar.

“I’ve been to the Iron Range. I’ve seen how underhanded and unfair trade practices have tilted the playing field against Iron Range workers and businesses,” Clinton said in a statement Thursday praising President Obama’s executive order this week to curtail steel dumping.

She has more support from the state’s unions and elected officials, but for some of the starkly liberal Democrats in northern Minnesota, Sanders’ solutions have more allure.

“I’m like Bernie. I’m for the working guy,” said Joe Begich, who long represented Eveleth in the Minnesota House. Now 86 years old and 32 years retired from work in the mines, Begich grabbed a front-row seat to see Sanders.

DISTRICT-BY-DISTRICT CAMPAIGN

The focus on northern Minnesota also has a strategic reason.

Minnesota Democrats allocate their presidential delegates by district, as well as statewide.

Eight years ago, when Clinton ran against now-President Obama in Minnesota, he swept all eight congressional districts. She netted her strongest results in the western 7th and northern 8th districts in outstate Minnesota. This year, she has organizers in every district.

The Sanders campaign is similarly targeted.

“Every single congressional district has delegates, so that is absolutely part of our plan,” said Robert Dempsey, Sanders Minnesota director.

Both Sanders and his campaign said he needs a significant delegate boost from Minnesota next week.

“If we can win here in Minnesota, we’ve got a real path to victory in the Democratic nomination,” Sanders said Friday.

Left unsaid: If he cannot win Minnesota, that path becomes rockier.

So after a side trip to Texas, which will also vote on Tuesday, Sanders plans to return to Minnesota. As his Hibbing visit concluded, his campaign announced a Saturday evening Sanders rally in Rochester.