Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Seeks to Portray Bernie Sanders as a Deceptive Candidate

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — As Senator Bernie Sanders returned to New Hampshire this morning after appearing in a Saturday Night Live skit, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was trying to cast him as a high-dollar fund-raiser of lobbyists and as an unethical exploiter of veterans, clergy, union workers and older people.

In a news release sent to reporters as Mr. Sanders made his way to a rally here, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, said, “It seems the Sanders campaign has shifted from insulting and dismissing people who don’t support him to falsely claiming their support. Despite being called on deceptive campaign tactics and misleading ads for weeks now, Sanders has now chosen to mislead voters on a veteran and veterans’ group’s support. Enough is enough — voters deserve better.”

The Clinton campaign pointed to fliers from the Sanders campaign that it said inappropriately used the images of veterans, ministers and senior groups to insinuate that Mr. Sanders had their endorsement, when he in fact did not. It also pointed to television ads in which it said Mr. Sanders misled New Hampshire voters by suggesting he had the endorsements of newspaper editorial boards that had not endorsed him. Outside the event, Clinton supporters handed out fliers that said “Paid for by Hillary for America” and cited Politifact New Hampshire’s rating of Mr. Sanders’ ads as “False.”

Hillary for America fliers being distributed outside the @BernieSanders event in Portsmouth pic.twitter.com/amkQsP3jDI

— Jason Horowitz (@jasondhorowitz) February 7, 2016

And some reports have emerged questioning Mr. Sanders’ purity on the campaign finance system he incessantly bashes as corrupt. On Sunday, MSNBC reported that Mr. Sanders attended a “lavish” fund-raiser in 2007 to benefit the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that included as guests government relations executives who were “directly employed by corporations such as the financial firms Blackrock and Prudential Financial, or the defense contractor Raytheon. Others represent large Washington law and lobbying firms, such as DLA Piper, Patton Boggs, and Akin Gump.”

Mr. Sanders is pushing for an overwhelming victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, having spent three times as much as Mrs. Clinton has on television ads here, according to Politico. But the Clinton campaign is doing everything it can to cut into Mr. Sanders’ sizable lead here so that she can close the gap and claim both a moral victory and momentum as the race moves to more favorable territory in Nevada and South Carolina. (If Mrs. Clinton could catch and beat Mr. Sanders here, in an overwhelmingly white state bordering his home state, Vermont, it could very well put the Bern on ice.)

At the event, Mr. Sanders remained undeterred in his message. Casting himself as the champion of working people, he attacked politicians who are “too busy raising money for their super PACs to worry about my life.” He added, “that is what the political revolution is about.”

In the crowd here, Wayne Antal, 46 said he had decided to support Mr. Sanders because of his “authenticity” and willingness to take on “systemic issues” like Wall Street’s corruption of campaign finance. Shown the critical fliers being handed out outside the event and told about the latest reporting on Mr. Sanders’ attendance at fund-raisers, Mr. Antal was unperturbed. “It’s a political campaign,” he said “you have to take everything with a grain of salt.”