Low-level bickering between Democratic candidates bursts into the open ahead of New York primary, with particular rancour over who is the most authentic

As if discovering gambling in Casablanca, political operatives professed themselves “shocked” on Thursday at signs of growing rancour between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton ahead of their unexpectedly competitive New York primary election.



“A new low,” complained Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, after her rival responded to what he believed were personal attacks on him by questioning whether she was “qualified to be president” either.

Exactly who started this latest war of words, is now the subject of a war of words too, with the Clinton camp accusing Sanders of responding to false media reports of its new aggressive strategy rather than accurately reflecting what their candidate had said or done.

Either way, low-level bickering between the campaigns that had been put on hold during a more polite midwest primary in Wisconsin burst into the open again just in time for a voracious New York media.



“It is pretty clear that their strategy is to impugn Bernie Sanders’ record ... and run a smear campaign,” responded his campaign manager Jeff Weaver on MSNBC. “They are going to see how a real New Yorker fights back … he is a son of Brooklyn and knows rough and tumble, he is not going to take it.”

Predictably, this battle over who is the authentic New Yorker is proving to be the most colorful.

The 74-year-old senator from Vermont lays the oldest claim, having spent the first 18 years of his life in a Brooklyn tenement building that left him with one of the most distinctive accents in American politics.

But his long absence revealed itself embarrassingly this week when he was asked by journalists how the subway worked and described using tokens, phased out in 2003.

“Can our photographer be there?” quipped the New York Daily News when a flustered Sanders joked he might just have to hop the turnstile instead.

It clearly provided ideas for Clinton though, who turned up at 161st Street station on Thursday with a pack of cameras to prove that her eight years as state senator had left her with more up-to-date street savvy – a photo opportunity only slightly marred by her failure to pull off the deft swipe needed to enter like a native.

The ensuing tit-for-tat might seem quaint by comparison to the brutal insults of the Republican nomination battle, but deterioration in public civility between Democrats is sparking growing concern that it could harm attempts to bring the party back together for November’s general election.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sanders once promised to avoid negative campaigning. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

“I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz any time, let’s keep our eye on what’s really important this election,” said Clinton as she sought higher ground on Thursday. “We are going to have to unify Democrats and right-thinking Americans to stand up to the Republicans.”

For Sanders, who once promised to avoid negative campaigning and has resisted pressure to attack Clinton’s email scandal, there appears less downside in drawing attention to their differences now that the candidates are moving into the final stretch.

There is a rhythm to their rhetoric too. Breakthroughs for Sanders in New Hampshire and Michigan brought an increase in scrutiny of his more radical candidacy, which only subsided after better nights for Clinton on Super Tuesday and in Ohio and Illinois on 15 March.

But since the last, and probably still decisive setback for his campaign in Illinois , Sanders has won 64% of the delegates in a string of more favourable small states that have cut Clinton’s delegate lead from 317 to 210.

A narrowing of polls in New York and Pennsylvania may not be enough to close the gap, but it is encouraging the Sanders campaign to contest Clinton’s legitimacy if she needs to rely instead on unelected “superdelegates” to clinch the nomination at July’s party convention.

“She has made a deal with the devil and the devil wants his due,” said Weaver in a particularly blunt Sanders camp attack on her reliance on wealthy donations on Thursday. “If the Clinton campaign wants to engage in a more bare knuckle approach, we are happy to do that as well.”

“This is not the type of politics that I want to get in,” added Sanders in a typical speech in Philadelphia. “But if we are going to be attacked … if there are going to question my qualifications, I think I have a right to question hers.”

It also explains why Clinton’s response is to increasingly question whether the independent senator is truly a member of the party that will decide the nomination in July. “He’s a relatively new Democrat, and, in fact, I’m not even sure he is one,” she told Politico in an interview published on Wednesday. “He’s running as one so I don’t know quite how to characterise him.”

But in this context, their latest war of words looks a lot more like the sparring that characterised Clinton’s equally acrimonious 2008 primary battle against Barack Obama than some sudden collapse in Democratic decorum.