Hillary Clinton answers Bernie Sanders’ New Hampshire surge with wave of endorsements
Hillary Clinton sees your mounting New Hampshire poll numbers, Bernie Sanders, and raises you a whole bunch of endorsements.
After five straight polls showed the Vermont senator leading the Democratic primary race in the Granite State, Clinton’s campaign answered back this week with a wave of endorsement announcements, capped off by the New Hampshire governor Thursday.
First, on Sunday, as CBS News released a poll showing Sanders up 22 percentage points in New Hampshire, the Concord Monitor published twoop-eds from Democrats endorsing the former secretary of state.
The first was co-written by U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster and former state Speaker of the House Terie Norelli, and emphasized that Clinton would address issues faced by “working’’ families.
“As the first woman ever to serve as president, Hillary Clinton will be our champion,’’ they wrote.
The second endorsement came from Dean Barker, a prominent progressive blogger in the state, in an op-ed titled “Progress is a marathon, not a presidential race.’’
Then on Monday, Clinton was endorsed by New Hampshire’s largest teachers’ union, the state chapter of the National Education Association.
Finally, the Clinton campaign announced Thursday in an email to reporters that Gov. Maggie Hassan would give her endorsement at a campaign event Friday at the University of New Hampshire.
According to the Monitor, a spokesperson for Hassan said in April she planned to hold off on 2016 “decisions’’ until the battle over the state’s budget was resolved. Hassan, speculated to run for Senate in 2016, signed a budget deal Wednesday.
Clinton was also endorsed by New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen over Labor Day Weekend. Clinton had previously visited the state during the 2014 midterm election races to campaign for both Hassan and Shaheen.
The recent endorsements illustrate a larger dynamic in the national 2016 Democratic primary race. Clinton is dominating the endorsement primary (aka the “invisible primary’’), which has shown to be as consistent a predictor of a party nominee as any variable, according to FiveThirtyEight.
As of this week, Clinton had been endorsed by 30 of the 44 Democratic senators and more than 100 members of the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the number of endorsements that Sanders — an independent senator running for the Democratic nomination — has received from his colleagues in the Capitol: zero.
2016 presidential candidates
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