Sanders' Iowa Supporters Try to Get New People out to Caucus
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Source: ABC News
Getting new people out to these party organizing events, which usually draw small numbers, remains the holy grail of Iowa politics. In 2008, Barack Obama helped boost attendance to an unmatched 240,000 Democrats and won on his way to the presidency. ... "We have to reach out to first-time caucus goers or caucus goers who haven't caucused in a long time," said Pete D'Alessandro, who is running the Iowa operation for the Vermont senator and Democratic contender. ... Sanders, who is back in Iowa this weekend, has been greeted rapturously on previous trips through the state, pumping up thousands of people at rallies with soaring rhetoric. But while his campaign message — with pledges of paid family leave, free public university and single-payer health care — has been received with enthusiasm, Sanders lags behind Clinton in state polls.
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Undaunted, a passionate force of paid and volunteer staffers is working all out for Sanders for caucus night Feb. 1. His campaign has brought in millions in contributions, enough to make him competitive when it comes to Iowa staffing. Currently, he has 91 paid people on the ground, about 70 of them organizers, and 21 offices across the state.
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Pollster Ann Selzer, who conducts the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll, noted one similarity between the contest today and in 2007. In Selzer's October poll, Clinton was leading the field, as she was then. But Selzer also noted that Obama held a double-digit lead with independents eight years ago and Sanders holds an even larger lead with that group this time.
"On paper you would say Sanders is in a better place" than Obama, the eventual Iowa winner, in 2007, Selzer said. But the question, she said, is whether he has the organization to turn that potential into caucus votes.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/sanders-iowa-supporters-people-caucus-35729757?nfo=/desktop_newsfeed_ab_refer_homepage
= new reply since forum marked as read
...without the benefit of being from a neighboring state.
Thanks, George! 
