New York is suddenly far more important than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders ever expected.

After Sanders racked up his sixth victory in the past seven contests Tuesday — and he’s likely to win again in Saturday’s Wyoming caucus — Clinton now faces the unavoidable fact that she must win New York by a convincing margin or face a barrage of questions about whether her campaign is faltering.


Nothing short of a cushioned victory in the state she represented as a senator is likely to calm persistent Democratic questions about why the front-runner is still losing states — some of them by landslide margins. While Clinton retains a comfortable lead of roughly 250 pledged delegates even after her Wisconsin loss, the campaign’s repeated insistence that Sanders can't catch up may be accurate, but it won't be enough to inspire confidence in her strength as the party nominee in November.

With two weeks before New York votes, the Clinton and Sanders campaigns know it.

It’s why Clinton checked out of Wisconsin on Saturday night and has since spent her time barnstorming across New York, including at a $15 minimum-wage event with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It’s why Sanders sat for an interview with the New York Daily News’ editorial board on Friday before heading back to Wisconsin to run up the score there.

Both sides are vigorously responding to the state’s sudden significance — and the rest of the party is closely watching.

“The battle for New York is going to be a titanic one, and perhaps the most important moment of the campaign so far,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network think tank in Washington. “It gives Clinton a chance to blunt Sanders’ momentum, and Sanders to make the race once again truly competitive. It will be a battle as big as New York itself."

For all the talk about Sanders’ momentum going into New York, the Vermont senator’s 13-point win in Wisconsin failed to significantly erode Clinton’s overall lead because of the way the state’s 86 pledged delegates are apportioned. It’s the heart of a talking point that Clinton allies return to over and over: Sanders hasn’t managed to dramatically narrow the delegate gap even after his string of wins.

Dismissing the Wisconsin results, Clinton allies see an opportunity to stop Sanders in his tracks with a resounding New York win.

“Tonight’s results do little to change the overall delegate math. Hillary Clinton continues to maintain a nearly insurmountable lead in the race for the Democratic nomination,” Brad Woodhouse, president of pro-Clinton super PAC Correct The Record, said in a statement Tuesday night. “As the race turns to New York, Pennsylvania, and other more diverse, delegate-rich states, Hillary’s coalition will continue to grow, while Sanders is simply running out of real estate."

The Clinton campaign itself even pre-spun the likely Wisconsin loss with a memo from campaign manager Robby Mook on Monday night, explaining that her lead is “nearly insurmountable." New York’s 247 delegates are a major prize, but unless Sanders can start winning large states like that one by a roughly 60 percent to 40 percent margin, his victories at this point are moot.

But delegate calculus can’t obscure the optics of a front-runner who appears to be a long way away from consolidating Democrats behind her candidacy. Each Sanders win validates his continued presence in the race and magnifies her weaknesses, fueling his argument that the momentum and money are on his side.

“I believe we’ve got an excellent chance to win New York and a lot of delegates in that state," he told a Laramie, Wyoming, crowd Tuesday night, one day after news broke that his campaign has raised over $35 million more than Clinton’s so far in 2016.

Sanders’ aides contend that a Clinton loss — or even a close contest — in New York would lead to a broad reevaluation of her candidacy, including a look at her unfavorable numbers compared to Sanders’. To that end, his team — made up of veterans of his early state operations — has started scheduling large rallies in New York while spending time and political capital skirmishing with the Clinton campaign over scheduling a debate in Brooklyn for next week.

"New York is an opportunity for us to head into a state Secretary Clinton represented for years in the Senate, and continue connecting with voters by spreading Bernie’s message about the need for a political revolution that finally fixes a rigged economy and a corrupt system of campaign finance,” said Karthik Ganapathy, an alum of Sanders’ New Hampshire leadership now in New York. “After a string of decisive wins in primaries and caucuses across the country, we feel good about our chances here because Bernie’s coming to New York with the wind at his back."

At a time when Clinton would prefer to be pivoting to Donald Trump and the general election — which she started to do back in March when the outlook was sunnier — her predicament is forcing her to take a step backward and remind New Yorkers of her knowledge of the territory and her work on their behalf as a senator. Her campaign has unleashed local surrogates to attack Sanders over his immigration stance, and it even went a step further on Tuesday.

Clinton supporters — most noticeably Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy — seized upon the transcript of Sanders’ interview with the Daily News to highlight his opposition to allowing gun manufacturers to be sued by victims of gun violence. With the Sandy Hook shootings as the backdrop, the tabloid made its Wednesday cover a picture of a grim-looking Sanders with the headline, “Bernie’s Sandy Hook Shame."

As polls in Wisconsin were about to close, Correct The Record sent out the jarring cover and attached story with the subject line, “Just Brutal….” Clinton's campaign, seeing even more fertile ground, took the entire transcript of the Daily News editorial board interview and copied it into a fundraising email for her backers.

The message?

“We’ve said for a long time that this primary is about who’s really going to be able to get things done,” the email says. “And from reading this interview, you get the impression Senator Sanders hasn’t thought very much about that."

