[URL='http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-12/clinton-campaign-capitalizes-on-failed-subway-swipe'][URL='http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/articles/2016-04-07/goodbye-wisconsin-nice-hello-big-apple-brawl']The Vermont lawmaker may be drawing bigger crowds, but the former secretary of state’s event schedule is hyperfocused.
By David Catanese | Staff Writer April 12, 2016, at 4:21 p.m.
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Clinton Exposing Sanders by Going Small
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Hillary Clinton speaks during a Glassdoor Pay Equality Roundtable on Tuesday in N.Y. Mary Altaffer/AP
NEW YORK CITY – Hillary Clinton is waging a tightly targeted campaign against Bernie Sanders in her adopted home state, one that's exposing the demographic weaknesses of the Vermont senator's insurgent challenge to her in the Democratic presidential primary.
Clinton's events in the Empire State routinely focus on a particular subset of voters, allowing her to narrowcast a specific message that resonates with them. Whether it be women, African-Americans or seniors, the Clinton operation is ever cognizant about catering to a targeted group's sweet spots.
Sanders, meanwhile, continues to rely on the mega-rally, packing as many supporters as he can into a venue and delivering his standard sermon of progressive platitudes – an approach that has defined his campaign from the start.
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It's a stark difference in strategy between the two candidates one week before the New York Democratic primary, in which 291 delegates are at stake – the largest single-state total to date. Sanders currently trails Clinton by around 250 pledged delegates. Her lead swells to nearly 700 when including superdelegates.
Sanders is playing from behind in polling here, too, trailing Clinton by 12 to 14 points, according to recent surveys of the race. The numbers show him shouldering double-digit deficits with women and minorities, hobbling him from expanding outside of his overwhelmingly white, progressive base.
On Tuesday, Clinton marked [URL='http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-12/the-worst-states-for-pay-inequality']Equal Pay Day by participating in a roundtable in midtown Manhattan organized by Glassdoor, a California-based company that collects data on corporations and employee salaries.
The event stressed that women still only make 76 cents for every dollar paid to men, and that African-American and Hispanic females fare even worse, earning just 64 cents and 56 cents, respectively, for every dollar white men earn.
"The last time I checked, there's no discount for being a woman. Groceries don't cost us less, rent doesn't cost us less, so why should we be paid less?" Clinton said in her remarks.
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She then sat down at a table for 45 minutes with a panel that included researchers in the equal pay field and Megan Rapinoe, a member of the World Cup-winning U.S. women's national soccer team. Rapinoe is among a group of players who have filed a complaint against the U.S. Soccer Federation, accusing the organization of compensating female players at a level far below that of player's on the U.S. men's national soccer team.
"We cheered when they won the World Cup and we cheered when they won the Olympic gold medal and we noticed that our men's team hasn't yet done that," Clinton said to laughs. "Yet somehow the men are making hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the women."
Clinton said passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act – which would make wages more transparent – and paid family leave were two solutions lawmakers could enact to help remedy the gulf.
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Day Piercy, a New York City resident who attended the event and plans to vote for Clinton, said afterward that it was this type of small setting that underlines the former secretary of state's substantive advantage over Sanders on a vast range of issues.
"I'm a big women's rights activist and I haven't seen him do anything on those issues, specifically. If he gets called on it, he'll give lip service to it. But he doesn't talk about domestic violence, he doesn't talk about sexual assault … he doesn't talk about equal pay. He's a one-line man, right? It's income inequality and he's got a plan for what we should do and it's a simple rhetoric plan," Piercy says.
To be fair, Sanders regularly lists "equal pay for equal work" in his speeches as a goal he shares. But he often mentions it only briefly, before readily moving on to other topics. Clinton's willingness to devote entire events to single issues conveys a dedication and sophistication that reverberates with voters looking for more than slogans.
"That's not rhetoric," says Piercy, gesturing to the room she just exited. "We're really talking about a problem of pay equity and how do we get to equal pay, and let's really talk about it. I see [Sanders] really up there at the high-level vision, and I agree with everything that he says. The question I have is, how are we going to move forward, given the gridlock we've got in Congress, given the huge divide between the right wing and more liberal people."
Pay equity is just one example of the hyper-focused Clinton campaign strategy.
On Sunday, former President Bill Clinton was dispatched to Queens for an event focused on Latino voters, before heading to three historic, Harlem churches with predominantly African-American congregations.
"When we had Bill Clinton [in the White House], somebody said that Bill Clinton thought he was the first black president," New York Rep. Charlie Rangel told the crowd at one event, according to the [URL='http://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-clinton-stumps-in-harlem-and-queens-to-mostly-cheers-some-jeers-1460336259']Wall Street Journal.
On Monday, as the former president spoke at a event for seniors in the Bronx, Hillary Clinton campaigned on gun violence prevention on Long Island. For most of the somber hour, family members of gun violence victims relayed their harrowing stories. One previously undecided mother who lost her son to a shooting announced her support for Clinton.
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Sanders' events, on the other hand, are almost always bigger and flashier than Clinton's and usually bursting with more energy. The Sanders campaign tallied more than 11,000 people at a rally in Buffalo on Monday. On Wednesday, celebrities Spike Lee and Tim Robbins and band Vampire Weekend will be featured at a rally in Manhattan's Washington Square Park.
But bigger isn't always better – and it's not clear that Sanders' large-scale rallies are doing much to make inroads with the blocs of voters he needs most. He trails Clinton by 40 points in New York among African-Americans, according to [URL='http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/nbc-poll-trump-clinton-hold-sizable-leads-new-york-n554311']NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polling. He's behind her among women by 20 points. Without cutting into those gaps, Sanders' path to victory here appears improbable.
The Sanders campaign says it does many of its smaller events in private, before the candidate takes the stage in front of the masses.
"At almost every rally we have meetings beforehand with groups ranging from labor to nurses to Native Americans. Sometimes he meets with local volunteers who have been out knocking on doors and asks for unvarnished feedback on what they're hearing. It's a very effective way for him to absorb information," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs says.
At the Glassdoor roundtable, where barely a few hundred people showed up and some seats in the theater were empty, Clinton was asked if she was hopeful the issue of pay equity was garnering real traction in the political realm.
She didn't deliver a stemwinder of an answer, or one that could be easily tossed on a bumper sticker. But she left those in attendance with the strong impression she would be committed to following through on it later.
"I'm actually optimistic, but I'm also very focused in making sure that we don't lose the impetus behind this conversation," she replied.[/URL][/URL][/URL]
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Its so disgusting that I am rooting for Trump at this point
