PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren tackled questions about her electability during her latest sweep through the Granite State — putting up a strong front even as her campaign remains dogged by lackluster polling and fundraising.
“I’m somebody who knows how to fight and knows how to win and that’s what I’m going to do,” Warren told reporters in Durham. “We’re going to win.”
Warren’s latest trip to New Hampshire came days after an Emerson College poll of Massachusetts Democratic primary voters put her in third behind U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. Warren garnered 14 percent of voters’ support in the poll, compared to Sanders’ 26 percent and Biden’s 23 percent.
“It’s early and I’m running the campaign that I want to run,” Warren said in response to her polling. “I love this. It’s a chance to get out and talk to people about what’s broken, about the optimism of we can fix it, and about how we’re going to build a grassroots movement to do it.”
Earlier this week, Warren’s team announced she raised $6 million in the first quarter — a total that put her behind even Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who raised $7 million. Sanders posted more than triple Warren’s haul, with $18.2 million in contributions in just 41 days.
Warren told a crowd of 250 in Portsmouth she wasn’t going to fight, “by going to places where I could raise lots of money — and the theory would be come when we get to the end I’ll have plenty of money to run a bunch of TV ads and persuade everybody I’m the right person. No. It’s to build it face-to-face … and to hope that enough people would say this fight is my fight, too.” She also directed attendees to her website to donate.
Former Portsmouth Mayor Eric Spear said, “Maybe (money is) a concern for her campaign, but not so much for the people of New Hampshire.”
Ozzie Parker of Dover said that in the home of the first-in-the-nation primary, “This is about message, not about money.”
