MANCHESTER, N.H. — Hillary Clinton’s win here eight years ago turned out to have little lasting impact — in part because she quickly dropped a string of caucus states to Barack Obama that eventually doomed her resurgent campaign.

Her Brooklyn-based brain trust is now quietly taking steps to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself in the wake of her Iowa caucus win — by investing heavily in caucus states like Idaho, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota to keep Bernie Sanders from quickly converting his popularity with young voters into a succession of easy victories that puts her in an unrecoverable hole.

With Sanders on the brink of a big win here in New Hampshire, Brooklyn is even investing in the senator’s home state of Vermont — in a bid to steal delegates from a primary held in Sanders’ backyard.

The campaign has made a strategic decision to spend big on organizers — new hires and staffers who helped her eke out a win in Iowa with a strong ground game — in the caucus states, according to people briefed on the campaign’s strategic blueprint.

“We are going on offense in the states that the Sanders campaign thinks will make for the friendliest terrain for them,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told POLITICO, the first time he’s publicly discussed the strategy. Mook refused to provide specific details on staff and cash allocations.

In 2008, Clinton learned the hard way that winning all of the delegate-rich primary states like Ohio, Texas and Florida was not enough to secure the nomination. With his team of Chicago operatives, Barack Obama cleaned up in smaller states where it was possible to build up huge margins of victory and amassed delegates for a relatively small expenditure of resources — even as Clinton was dominating the big primary states.

Obama’s ability to win 15 delegates in Idaho, for example, to Clinton’s 3, netted him 12 delegates. And even though Clinton won by 10 points in Ohio — a state that pledged 141 delegates awarded proportionally and where Mook served as Clinton’s state director that cycle — the campaign netted only a paltry nine delegates for all of the hard work of organizing a big state.

The 2016 strategy, campaign officials said, is built on lessons learned. The hope is to limit Sanders’ gains and block him from racking up the 2,382 delegates needed to win the nomination.

“About 60 percent of delegates are at stake in March,” said another campaign official, who declined to discuss strategy on the record. “Mathematically, the contest might not be over by the end of the month, but, realistically, somebody might be ahead and not able to be caught.”

The moves don’t reflect a shift in strategy but an admission that Sanders’ surge has shifted the dynamics of the race.

Hunkering down for what’s now expected to be a monthslong battle against the 74-year old democratic socialist, Clinton’s campaign has started to invest more heavily in the March primary states, as well. It recently opened a campaign office in Birmingham, Alabama. In San Antonio, Texas, the campaign this week organized a series of canvasses and phone banks. Those initial efforts are expected to be bolstered by big spending on television commercials and mail.

But the campaign is planning to send a disproportionate amount of its resources to caucus states like Colorado, where it anticipates a difficult battle but wants to prevent the Vermont senator from running up the delegate score.

Sanders big fundraising hauls — he outraised Clinton last month by $5 million — means he is expected to have the resources to stay in the race late into spring. Many Clinton allies have started to worry he could even prolong the primary battle all the way to the convention in July, softening her up for the onslaught of Republican blows she will encounter in the general election if she wins the nomination.

Sanders’ operatives said they are confident in their strategy and ability to win. “Our people on the ground are aware,” senior strategist Tad Devine said of the Clinton campaign’s infiltration of the caucuses. “We have to be completely independent. If they want to make caucus states a big show down, that’s fine. It’s always been our plans to compete there because we think there’s an intensity of support for us. Obama showed it’s a great place to win delegates.”

Devine said he is not worried about Clinton trying to block any perceived advantage they could enjoy in the caucus states.

“I think their plan was to knock us out in Iowa,” he said. “That didn’t work so well. We think our standing is improving rapidly with voters in Nevada. We’ve built a great organization in South Carolina. Soon, we’ll be moving with media into the early states, and we’ve moved to a real ground force in every March 1 state and beyond that.”

Clinton allies said they were relieved the Democratic front-runner is embracing the caucus system this time. But they warned of trying “to win the race of yesterday. You applaud [campaign manager] Robby Mook for looking at the numbers,” said one Democratic strategist with ties to the Clintons, “but you also have to be sure he has a strategy to deal with how the real world is at this time.”

Annie Karni

Politico   February 8, 2016