CHARLESTOWN, New Hampshire — For many voters seeking to buck the Democratic establishment at the ballot box, Tulsi Gabbard has the anti-insider credentials that Bernie Sanders lost.
“Even though I live in Vermont, I don’t necessarily believe Bernie has the ability as a candidate,” said Michele Ohayan, a semi-retired small business owner from Rockingham, on Wednesday. “He’s been in the Establishment for so long, I think he’s lost touch.”
“She has the touch,” Ohayan, 55, said of Gabbard.
The Hawaii Democrat congresswoman and Army Nation Guard veteran is largely known for her sharp anti-war stance and criticism of “new Cold War” foreign policy. Her willingness to confront longtime leaders who hold attitudes that exasperate voters was on display Wednesday when she filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Clinton in October said Gabbard was “a favorite of the Russians” and suggested she is being “groomed” to run as a third-party spoiler candidate. Gabbard has repeatedly said she would not run third-party in 2020 and will support the Democratic presidential nominee.
“I will not stand quietly by as Hillary Clinton or anyone else tries to smear my character and my loyalty and dedication to serving our country,” Gabbard, 38, told a crowd of around 50 at a town hall in Charlestown, New Hampshire, on Wednesday.
That fire-in-the-belly is something her supporters think Sanders lacks this time around.
“He’s afraid of the DNC, or something happened to him at the end of 2016,” retired Keene resident Joseph Mirzeoff said of Sanders.
Mirzeoff took issue with Sanders’s apology to former Vice President Joe Biden this week for a column a Sanders endorser wrote that called Biden “corrupt.” That, he indicated, felt like throwing his supporter under the bus, similar to when Sanders endorsed Clinton.
“I feel that that’s what Bernie did to us in 2016,” said Mirzoeff, 65, who has attended multiple Gabbard town halls and intends to vote for her. “He goes and supports Hillary, who everybody hated because she’s corrupt.”
Though the voters are frustrated by Sanders, Gabbard, who received 5% support in a New Hampshire poll released Thursday that Sanders led, does not criticize the Vermont senator and in some ways continues to align herself with him.
She has not endorsed many of the policy proposals that put Sanders on the left fringe of the Democratic field, such as eliminating student loan debt or implementing a tax on wealth. But her campaign continuously notes that she resigned as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 in order to endorse Sanders in the presidential primary, cementing her dissident image.
Gabbard defended Sanders this week after Clinton stated that “nobody likes him” and that she was not ready to support him if he wins the Democratic presidential nomination.
“This isn’t high school,” Gabbard said Tuesday, after tweeting “I like Bernie” earlier in the day. A political operative who introduced her at an event in Keene said that Sanders “joined the exclusive club in this 2020 primary with Tulsi, being attacked by a former secretary of state that will not be named.”
After Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren alleged that Sanders told her in a private 2018 conversation that he did not think a woman could win the presidency in 2020, which Sanders denied, Gabbard shared that she also had a one-on-one conversation with him before announcing her candidacy.
“He showed me the greatest respect and encouragement, just as he always has,” Gabbard said of her conversation with Sanders.
Gabbard’s warmth toward Sanders helps reel in those who liked him in 2016 but worry he has capitulated too much.
Alan Littlefield, a landscaper in Charlestown, no longer thinks the 78-year-old senator is not the best person to take on political elites.
“I’m being nice about it, I could say more about it,” said Littlefield, 55. “Somehow, they shoved him away so he didn’t have a chance,” he said, adding: “I’m concerned about his health.”
Many political insiders criticize Gabbard’s lawsuit and fiery rhetoric against Clinton as a ploy for attention, but voters who attend her evens see the move as self-defense and a rebuke of negative campaigning.
Kendra Yakovleff, a retired counselor in Charlestown who is active in the local Democratic Party group, had considered voting Sanders, but the campaign spats entangling him in recent weeks, such as the “he said, she said” dispute between him and Warren and Sanders’s attacks on Biden’s Social Security record, turned her off.
“He’s not doing things that I like,” Yakovleff said. But after seeing Gabbard on Wednesday, she was impressed. “I think I’m going to vote for her.”
