photos by Iain Oldman
Volunteers for the Sanders campaign set up in one of the office locations, in East Liberty on Monday. These volunteers also helped recruit people to register to vote.
Ahead of the March 28 deadline to register to vote in Pennsylvania’s closed primary, both Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination bid have opened offices in Pittsburgh.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign opened an office at 216 N. Highland Ave in East Liberty on Thursday, March 24. Many local and state politicians attended the event and Pittsburgh City Paper reported an attendance of around 250. Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto was there at the christening of the new office, as well as U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle and state Rep. Ed Gainey.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign officially opened their first office in Pittsburgh on Wednesday at 1317 E. Carson St. The Sanders campaign has plans to open two more offices – one in the North Shore and another one a mere two blocks away from Clinton’s office in East Liberty.
The office in East Liberty is Clinton’s first in the state other than her campaign’s Pennsylvania headquarters in Philadelphia. Sanders opened an office in Scranton, the hometown of Clinton’s father, on March 22.
East Liberty has been a destination for Democratic offices in Pittsburgh during the last few election cycles. Then Sen. Barack Obama opened his Pittsburgh offices there during the 2008 election and Gov. Tom Wolf chose the neighborhood to house his campaign office in the 2014 gubernatorial race. During the 2008 election, Clinton opened an office downtown on Smithfield Street.
The East Liberty neighborhood, accessible to Point Park students by shuttle, is a prime location for foot traffic and vision according to Juan Pablo Mendoza, an organizer for ‘Burgers for Bernie,’ a Sanders volunteer advocacy group based out of Pittsburgh.
“This area is pretty ideal because, first of all, there’s very high foot traffic and car traffic, so a lot of people are going to be seeing the office and seeing us around,” Mendoza said in the East Liberty office on Saturday. “It increases the visibility a lot, specifically in this area.”
Clinton’s campaign chose the neighborhood because of its central location to many key voter blocs in Pittsburgh.
“East Liberty is central to all sorts of demographics. You’re able to talk to people from all walks of life,” Mo Shatara said inside the Clinton office on Monday morning. Shatara is an organizer for Hillary for America and Hillary for Pennsylvania. “It’s really really close to multiple universities. It gives us a large access to the student body and residential parts of Pittsburgh.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign opened an office in Pittsburgh at 218 N. Highland Ave. in East Liberty on Thursday, March 24. Local politicians, including Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, attended the event.
Pennsylvania’s primary is shaping up to be a pivotal moment for either candidate in search of the nomination. With 210 delegates up for grabs, the Keystone state is second only to New York in delegate numbers in primaries and caucuses until June.
Sanders will especially need to win, and win large, in Pennsylvania. Though he swept in landslides at the caucuses in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington, Sanders still trails Clinton by over 200 pledged delegates. The opinion poll analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com estimates that Sanders will have to win a little over 51 percent of the delegates remaining in order to secure 2,026 delegates, the slimmest majority possible at the Democratic National Convention.
A Franklin & Marshall College poll released on March 24 showed Clinton up by 25 points on Sanders in Pennsylvania, though Sanders had similarly dismal numbers before his surprising primary victory in Michigan. The poll only reflects the responses of registered voters and may not accurately show the opinions of the entire state ahead of the registration deadline.
Sanders’ campaign volunteers hope to tighten the poll numbers by using the offices as a jumping off point to spread information about the candidate.
“When you say Clinton has a lot of support, a lot of that comes because people think of her as the default candidate. They don’t want to vote for Donald "I am the only person who immediately walked out of my 'Ali G' interview" Trump and they recognize the name Hillary Clinton, and they go to the polls and vote for the Democratic candidate they recognize,” Mendoza said. “That’s the main goal for our volunteer effort is to get Bernie’s word out to people.”
The Clinton campaign isn’t taking the state as a guaranteed win, though.
“Pennsylvania is a state we’re very concerned about, a state we want to win. The path to winning the presidency and the general election runs through Pennsylvania for every Democrat,” Shatara said.
Both campaigns were focused on voter registration leading up to the March 28 deadline to register to vote in the state’s primary. Sanders volunteers were on Point Park University’s campus last week with clipboards in hand, getting unregistered voters to sign up in time.
“We are focusing entirely on voter registration drives because the deadline is on Monday [March 28]. Our strategy has been to have a lot of little voter registration drives, which is about four volunteers each,” Mendoza said. “Today, we had over 50 volunteers in this office alone so that was really good and we managed to send volunteers all over the city for voter registration drives.”
University of Pittsburgh law students were out running a registration drive for the Clinton office last week.
“The voter registration was a lot more student driven, and I think it went well,” Shatara said. “We absolutely want everyone who wants to vote to be registered.”
Clinton’s campaign has been offering fellowship volunteer positions to students interested in joining the campaign effort.
“A fellowship is a lot like the volunteer effort but you add to it the knowledge of what’s going on behind the scenes and how things get prepared,” Shatara said. “I highly recommend the fellowship to anyone that is interested in getting into political campaigns.”
After the voter registration deadline, the campaign offices will turn to canvassing efforts around the entire city.
Shatara stated the Clinton campaign will hold phone banking days in their offices every Tuesday and Thursday leading up to the primary.
“We’re going to be launching our canvass efforts from right here, so when we go door to door we’ll be meeting here at the office,” Shatara said.
The Sanders campaign is currently gearing up to open their East Liberty and North Shore offices within the coming weeks, followed by canvassing efforts of their own. The volunteers in the Sanders campaign hope to have the office in East Liberty, located at 117 N. Highland Ave., up and running for a soft open on Saturday, April 2.
For that office specifically, Mendoza says the volunteer efforts will continue with successful events they’ve held in the past, such as debate watch parties at popular bars and restaurants like Capri on Penn Ave.
“It’s good to have parties where we are basically trying to integrate with members of the community,” Mendoza said. “Similarly, we have gone out walking, talking with people on the corners out here and outside of the supermarkets.”
“There’s still a lot of undecided voters in Pittsburgh,” Mendoza said. “If we get a large enough volunteer force to go out and talk to people on the street, it will have a huge impact.”
None of the Republican candidates left gunning for the GOP’s presidential nomination bid have any offices open in Pennsylvania, as of yet. In fact, John Kasich is the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, to have spoken in the state at all during its campaign season.
Kasich spoke at Villanova University in Delaware County during a campaign stop on the same day it was announced a challenge to keep him off of the state’s primary ballots would be dropped.
The Sanders campaign has plans to open three offices in Pittsburgh alone, including one just two blocks down from Hillary Clinton’s office on Highland Avenue in East Liberty. Only the location at 1317 E. Carson St. is officially open, though the location at 117 N. Highland Ave., pictured above, is planned for a soft opening on Saturday, April 2.
