Rivals jostle to gain favor in N.H. vote

Storm threatens final push

An audience member watches as Donald Trump speaks Monday during a campaign event in Londonderry, N.H. Trump leads polls heading into today’s GOP primary.
An audience member watches as Donald Trump speaks Monday during a campaign event in Londonderry, N.H. Trump leads polls heading into today’s GOP primary.

SALEM, N.H. -- Pushing for wins on the eve of the nation's initial primary, presidential candidates jockeyed for position Monday, making their final appeals to voters and sharpening their attacks on one another.

photo

AP

A Secret Service agent stands guard as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont speaks Monday during a campaign stop in Manchester, N.H. The Democratic presidential candidate holds a sizable lead over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary polls.

With a snowstorm bearing down on the state and threatening to derail the final crush of campaign events Monday, Republicans worked in the hope of outperforming recent polls that suggest Donald Trump is the favorite to win the state, with Sen. Marco Rubio and a glut of other candidates locked in a battle for second place.

The storm, which began before lunchtime and was expected to drop several inches through this morning, had all the campaigns talking to their field organizers to ensure they were prepared for possible complications for their get-out-the-vote operations.

With polls showing Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leading on the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to move past talk of a shakeup in her campaign and contention over comments by supporters that women should feel obligated to vote for her. Barnstorming New Hampshire with her husband and daughter, she worked to flip Sanders' favored critique against her by claiming that he, too, had taken big bucks from Wall Street, if only indirectly.

As the first handful of votes were cast just after midnight, Sanders and Ohio Gov. John Kasich took early leads.

Sanders won over all four Democratic voters in the tiny town of D̶i̶x̶v̶i̶l̶l̶e̶ Dixville Notch*, while Kasich sneaked past Trump, 3-2, among Republicans. Under New Hampshire law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.

Billionaire businessman Trump launched some of the harshest attacks Monday -- not just against Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who had bested him in Iowa, but against former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

"Jeb is having some kind of a breakdown, I think," Trump told CNN, calling Bush, the son and brother of presidents, a spoiled child and an embarrassment to his family. "I think it's a very sad situation that's taking place."

Vying for votes in Nashua, Bush described Trump as a loser, a liar, a whiner and the worst choice for president. He blasted what he said was Trump's proclivity for "insulting women, castigating Hispanics, ridiculing the disabled and calling American POWs losers."

Trump got in a shot at Cruz during a rally Monday night. He was speaking to a crowd of about 5,000 people inside the Verizon Center in Manchester when a woman in the crowd shouted that Cruz was a "p***y."

"You know what she said? Shout it out," Trump said. The woman repeated her remark.

"You're not allowed to say that and I never expected to hear you say that again. I never expect to hear you say that again. She said he's a p***y," Trump said, eliciting cheers from the audience.

Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler responded via email, saying, "Let's not forget who whipped who in Iowa."

Republicans on the attack

Not so long ago, Republicans saw New Hampshire as the proving ground that would winnow their field of candidates. Rubio's surge into third place in Iowa last week raised the prospect that New Hampshire voters would anoint him over Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kasich.

Yet Rubio faced fresh questions about his readiness and his ability to defeat the Democratic nominee after Saturday's debate, when he was mocked for delivering the same answer, about President Barack Obama's intentions to change the U.S., three times within a matter of minutes.

Rubio insisted his repetitions were part of his plan.

"People said, 'Oh, you said the same thing three or four times,'" Rubio told about 800 people in a school cafeteria in Londonderry. "I'm going to say it again."

"The core of this campaign is that statement," Rubio said on CBS. Asked by a customer at a diner in Nashua if he expects to ultimately prevail in the Republican contest, Rubio said: "Of course. It's going to take a little longer, that's all."

Rubio's opponents were on the attack.

"I think Saturday night changed everything," Christie told reporters in Manchester on Monday. Among Rubio's donors, he said, "I think a lot of checks are being ripped up this morning." Christie initiated the line of questioning that some said stumped Rubio, and Christie has held more New Hampshire events than any other Republican, according to a tally from the New England Cable Network.

Christie and Bush both piled on Rubio, saying he hadn't been tested the way that governors have.

"He doesn't have a proven record, and I think people aren't willing to make a risky bet on that," Bush said on MSNBC's Morning Joe program.

Kasich was similarly unsparing when it came to Rubio.

"People are looking not only to understand what's in your head, but they also want to know what's in your heart," he said outside a library in Plaistow, N.H., as snowflakes swirled around him. "And if all you are scripted, I'm not sure people respond to that."

The winner of the Iowa caucuses, Cruz, mostly stayed out of the fray. He wasn't expected to repeat his performance in Iowa, which depended largely on a strong showing with the state's evangelical voters.

On Monday, Cruz suggested he was looking past the results in New Hampshire, saying his campaign "never viewed any of these states as a must-win." Asked if he can finish in second, Cruz told reporters he expected to finish strong in South Carolina, and then a group of southern states on March 1, known as Super Tuesday.

"We'll have an amazing day on Super Tuesday," Cruz said at the American Legion in Manchester. "And our campaign from day one has been built on a national campaign built on the grass roots."

He also appeared to be laying the groundwork for a debate over women in the armed forces that he might push more aggressively once the campaign moves to South Carolina, which has a large military presence and holds its GOP primary Feb. 20. On Monday in Barrington, Cruz insisted that Republicans who refused to rule out a military draft for women, as some of his opponents have, were "nuts."

Sanders lead sizable

In the week since Clinton eked out a win in the Iowa caucuses, her campaign has worked to lower expectations for New Hampshire, where Sanders has maintained a sizable lead in the polls despite Clinton's victory there eight years ago. Sanders, a Vermont senator, is well-known to voters in neighboring New Hampshire.

In a radio interview with WBUR, a radio station in Boston, Clinton expressed hope that she could pull off a New Hampshire surprise and beat Sanders.

"I think if I can convince Granite Staters to give me another look, I'll do better," she said. "I'm going to keep fighting until the last vote has been cast."

Clinton was shouldering renewed troubles amid talk of a possible campaign reshuffling. Although campaign manager Robby Mook is expected to stay, some Clinton allies have said new advisers may be brought in after today.

The former first lady insisted it was all overblown.

"I have no idea what they're talking about or who they are talking to," Clinton said on MSNBC. "We're going to take stock, but it's going to be the campaign that I've got."

Sanders stuck to core campaign themes as he addressed cheering supporters in Nashua. In recent days, Bill Clinton has accused some Sanders supporters of waging "sexist" attacks, and feminist Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have criticized women who aren't supporting Clinton.

Sanders passed up all of that on Monday, instead telling supporters in Nashua, "We have come a long way in the last nine months." But his campaign did take issue with Clinton's claim that Sanders benefited from Wall Street money donated to Senate Democrats' campaign arm, with campaign manager Jeff Weaver arguing it "suggests the kind of disarray that the Clinton campaign finds itself in today."

At his stops on Monday, Sanders did not directly criticize Clinton, instead restating his broad assault on the corrupting influence of money in politics and the power and wealth of Wall Street and corporate America.

"We are running a very radical campaign because we are telling the American people the truth," Sanders said at a midday rally in downtown Manchester.

Also on Monday, the Financial Times reported that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is "looking at all the options" on a potential presidential run, the first time he's publicly commented since The New York Times reported on his deliberations about an independent bid last month. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

"I'm listening to what candidates are saying and what the primary voters appear to be doing," Bloomberg said, according to the Financial Times, adding he'd need to start work to get on ballots at the beginning of March. A Bloomberg spokesman declined to comment.

Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Jill Colvin, Ken Thomas, Holly Ramer, Thomas Beaumont, Sergio Bustos and Lisa Lerer of The Associated Press; by Michael C. Bender, James Nash, Kevin Cirilli, Mark Niquette, Terrence Dopp, Megan Murphy and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; by Alan Rappeport, Michael Barbaro, Jess Bidgood, Thomas Kaplan, Jonathan Martin and Ashley Parker of The New York Times; and by Dan Balz, Philip Rucker, Jose A. DelReal, Anne Gearan, Jenna Johnson, Michael Kranish, Abby Phillip, Sean Sullivan, David Weigel and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post.

A Section on 02/09/2016

*CORRECTION: Dixville Notch, N.H., was one of three New Hampshire communities to hold its presidential primary voting and report its results shortly after midnight Tuesday. This story incorrectly identified the town.

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