Bernie's Mountain Ground Game
In New Hampshire, the Sanders army is boldly going where no canvasser has gone before—don't call the police.
Senator Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally on Feb. 6, 2016 in Rindge, New Hampshire.
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A few weeks ago, out of an abundance of caution, Brandon Maheu began calling local police departments around New Hampshire to alert them that their towns were about to be invaded by clipboard-wielding insurgents calling for revolution.
The idea of proactively calling the cops marked a shift within the Bernie 2016 state headquarters, where Maheu serves as New Hampshire primary director. At that point, phone calls from law enforcement (four different police departments had gotten in touch to report panicked calls from residents) had come to be tracked as an unintended metric of success for the Sanders campaign’s ambitious ground game.