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LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Sanders Still Not Conceding Iowa And Requesting "Count Sheets"; Clintons Hold "Get Out The Vote" Rally In New Hampshire; Voters Switched Parties In Iowa To Vote For And Against Trump; It's Cruz, Trump, Then Rubio In Iowa Caucuses; Candidates Look To New Hampshire After Iowa; Cruz Apologizes To Carson Campaign. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 2, 2016 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[12:30:03] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: And we're going to be talking to the state's party this morning to review the results.

In a few precincts, six by the Des Moines register's count, the out come came down to coin flips. All of which were won by Senator Clinton. I'm going to spare you the finer points here of Iowa delegate apportionment, but even in a race this close, it is unlikely that the coin tosses made the difference in the numbers that you see when you are looking at the big screen. Win or lose, Hew Hampshire now beckons.

In the first of the nation primary, one week from today -- they are getting excited, folks. Already, look, still dark this morning, and there's a rally ongoing these hours from the Iowans who probably still not even in bed by that point. It brings me to CNN Jeff Zeleny who is following the Clinton campaign in Nashua and, Joe Johns with team Sanders in Iowa.

So Joe, let me start with you if I can, that whole notion that Bernie Sanders is going to count all those pages. I assume this is critical for bragging rights. Something that can make a difference in delegate count, though, is it?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Now, it doesn't sound like it. And I got to tell you that it sounds like the Sanders campaign is just putting out a hint on trying to have it both ways. A little over an hour ago Bernie Sanders tweeting on his own official count that, when we stand together anything is possible, suggesting that last night was evidence of that, but we also have that reporting that they're not going stand down on this issue.

We're trying to get more information about the vote count in Iowa. I've reached out to the campaign. Haven't heard back from them yet, but one of the big questions really is how do you recreate the vote count when it starts out with shows of hands and when the tie-breakers are done by a coin toss. How do you recreate that evidence and how do you get something very standard?

If you look back for four years ago in the Republican contest where they actually count the votes, it was a little easier in a very close race and Rick Santorum was declared the eventual winner. But this is a little bit different animal with the Democrats. At any rate, Bernie Sanders is focussing now on New Hampshire. And also, and taking the long view because he knows once he gets out of the state where he is viewed very favorably in the polls, he could have some challenges as he moves to some of those other early voting states. Listen to what he said earlier today with Chris Cuomo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Do you take this as a victory regardless of what the margin is?

SEN BERNIE SANDERS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Absolutely, look, what you are talking about is one way or the other, a couple of delegates, where we're going to need 2300 delegates to win those fight. So maybe we lost by two, maybe we lost by one, maybe by zero, whatever it may be. But what this shows is that this campaign has started in a very forceful way. Starting way, way back and coming to a virtual tie. We are going to fight here in New Hampshire. Look forward to winning here and doing well around the rest of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: I got South Carolina coming up very soon. That could be a challenge because Hillary Clinton runs so strong with minority voters, and there's, of course, the question Florida, and what happens with the senior citizen who live there. He has pushed hard on social security, so that could make a difference. Ashleigh, back to you.

BANFIELD: OK, Joe Johns, thank you. Live from Keene. I want to go back over to Nashua, New Hampshire, which Jeff Zeleny is standing by. Jeff, you are at that speech that we began on the program. We dip in live to Hillary Clinton's first speech I'm assuming of the day since the win, the self-declared win last night. She sounds l like she had some wind in her sails. Is that the feeling you're getting?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: No question, Ashleigh. She, of course is, declaring victory. But what she didn't say was an asterisk with that victory. Essentially this is going to become a delegate fight. It could be a long drawn out fight, and she and Bernie Sanders essentially are tied with Iowa delegates. She may win a couple more. The fight is going to go on. But actually what I'm struck by here, we are hearing new themes, new tones. She's clearly drawing a sharper distinction with Bernie Sanders. She said she has plans that you can hold her accountable.

Said she is the candidate who can stand up to Republicans. So as she enters the seven-day stretch here in new Hampshire, her aides tell me that they know she has to make sharper contrasts against Bernie Sanders to remind them that she believes she has the experience and can actually accomplish things. Of course, she has a big lead here in New Hampshire, though. The next seven days will be a fasting test of her message to see if she once again can have a comeback here in New Hampshire as she so famously did eight years ago.

BANFIELD: Wow. Sharper message. OK. Accountable and stand up for the Republicans. Not sure how sharp that's going to sound to people out there. I'm all ears. All right, Jeff Zeleny, thank you for that. I want to bring in CNN's senior political analyst and editorial director of the National Journal Ron Brownstein.

[12:35:02] Ron, the first thing I want to ask you is the whole notion that Bernie Sanders had one hell of a machine in place for Iowa last night. He had everything. The eyes were dotted. The T's were crossed. I'm not sure if there's anything else Bernie Sanders could have done other than jab Hillary maybe a little harder on the e-mails on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But if he couldn't do it in Iowa -- and I'm not saying it's not final there, but let's just say for now if Hillary's self-declared victory is true, can he do it really anywhere else other than New Hampshire and maybe a couple of other states?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's a great question. I mean look, it was an accomplishment to come back to that dead heat from the advantages of Hillary Clinton started particularly with the political infrastructure and the establishment in the state. But there are, I think -- your question is the right one. I mean, Bernie Sanders answered two big questions in Iowa last night, but two are more that he has to answer more before he can truly become a full-scale threat to nomination.

The two he answered was support and enthusiasm on young people did translate from the rallies to the ballot box. I mean, his advantage, among voters under 30, was 6-1. That's incredible. The other thing he did, Ashleigh, was extend and advance beyond that beach head of white collar, white liberals to run competitively among blue collar whites. And that's something the previous candidates lane like Gary Hart and Paul Sanders and Bill Bradley could not do.

But there are two big hurdles still remaining. The first one is that this hasn't gotten. Is that even as well as he did in Iowa, he still lost self-identified Democrats by 18 percentage points. He relied heavily on Independents. And the other thing that is very true about Iowa, not going to be answered in New Hampshire but is looming in South Carolina and Nevada, minorities cast about one-third to 40 percent of all the votes in the Democratic primary, and Hillary Clinton with that small sample last night got about 60 percent of those voters. If you can't crack into African-Americans and Hispanics, it's going to be very difficult for him to win any of the big states which are much more diverse than Iowa or New Hampshire.

BANFIELD: You know, I wish I were a fly on the wall in the Hillary camp. But they were really nervous going into Iowa, and I'm curious as to whether they're still on edge likely or relieved or a little bit of both. But, Ron Brownstein, I've got to leave it. Thank you. Nice to see you.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you. >

BANFIELD: OK, so officially Iowa in the history books. Candidates wasting no time, they were on planes last night honestly for New Hampshire giving speeches in the dark. Look at this. Poor guy. I don't think any of them slept much.

Sanders back on the stump on the back of a pickup truck this morning. Just what might happen in that primary one week from today? Our political panel is going to weigh in on that. Some critical questions that still need to be answered, how do people feel about both of these candidates as compared to their Republican rivals?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:42:02] BANFIELD: So, as the candidates look to New Hampshire, will any lessons from Iowa change what they do, the tactics? One thing we found out last night was that many folks took part for the very first time, and that some did some party swapping, in fact, to impact the GOP race. And not the way you think. They swapped for two different reasons, to support Trump and to thwart Trump, believe it or not. Here's how it played out on the air when Brian Todd was live at one of the precincts. Have a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: People standing next to the walls on my left. People are just lining in this place. They are incredibly enthusiastic about coming here.

We talked to a lot of people changing party affiliations and voting for the first time. Some of them told us they're doing that to vote for Donald Trump, and a lot of them all told us they're doing it to vote against him. So that's what's going to make the ballot count here so very exciting when they start this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Pretty fascinating dynamic. In Washington, Republican Strategist Alex Castellanos joins us to talk about that. In Nashville, Scottie Nell Hughes, is Trump surrogate. And Nomiki Konst, a democratic strategist and supports Bernie Sanders and she's coming to us live from Iowa.

Scottie, first to you. Were you watching that last night? Did you see Brian Todd talking about all those people lining up at the party affiliation switch table and they each had a reason either so that they could thwart Donald Trump or support Donald Trump? And while you're at it, how does that look for New Hampshire?

SCOTTIE NELL HUGHES, TRUMP SURROGATE: Well, and think about how powerful the statement that is. They are already thinking of strategy for the general election. So that basically tells you who they're planning on going up against. So I give them credit right now for thinking, OK, we're going to make sure that Donald Trump is not the one that goes up against whoever our nominee might be because that's a person that we're scared of.

Now, New Hampshire is a completely different state. They always say, you know, Iowa said that what was it, Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks candidates. That's kind of what we have seen in the past history. So going to New Hampshire, I think Mr. Trump is going to keep right on task. He is already up 25 points in the polls. So he's obviously doing it right there. But I think this time he is also going to take more into the grass roots media into consideration, local radio, local on-line bloggers, those sorts of folks and kind of giving them a little more access than maybe they had in Iowa.

BANFIELD: Let's look at the bottom three governors in this race. That they all three totaled about seven percent. These were guys that we thought were going to be up at the top of the heap.

Alex, I'm going to get you to weigh in on this. A lot of people say that they all expected to go into New Hampshire and then benefit from the spoils of Iowa. Everybody got winnowed out of the field. They would collect up all of their supporters and they would actually make a statement, you know, come to New Hampshire time and then along came Marco Rubio to say, the winnowing is not exactly the way you might think it's going to be. What do we need to know about that result in Iowa as we move forward to the field winnowing in New Hampshire and beyond.

[12:45:06] ALEX CASTELLANOS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, that's exactly what happened. Marco Rubio kind of sailed in front of them and took their wind. He's going to ride that momentum into New Hampshire. New Hampshire loves to correct Iowa's mistake. You know those Iowans drink too much ethanol and we're going to fix that.

Rubio has come in now as almost the underdog in New Hampshire. And I think he is giving New Hampshire voters a chance to empower their votes. They couldn't just have to rubber stamp anything. And those governors, I think, are in a tough place because it increasingly looks like they're not going to be able to win. And if they start to attack Marco Rubio and bring him down which they probably will, it's going to look selfish and self-serving, more about power than about helping the Republican Party succeed.

So, Marco Rubio actually needs to be tested. He is a young candidate. A lot of people see him as charismatic, but immature, and a good test with weathering a good storm in New Hampshire might give voters a chance, so you know, maybe this guy is strong enough and mature enough to lead. So that's what might come out of New Hampshire. A Rubio, Cruz, Donald Trump dynamic.

BANFIELD: OK, let's look at the other possibilities here, and that's all the others. So Nomiki, I want you to weigh in and just take them hats off for a minute. What are we going to see going forward with Carson, Fiorina, Paul? I mean obviously that could we doubt Santorum? Why are these people still in the race? Are they actually going to be in longer than, say, I don't know, a few days?

NOMIKI KONST, SANDERS SUPPORTER: I mean each campaign is running their own strategy. In Iowa, I got to talk to a bunch of the Republicans. I mean as a democrat, we don't have an opportunity to talk to these people often. So it was fascinating to hear some of the strategy behind their motivation. Rand Paul I think in Iowa in particular had a really strong on the ground campaign and as did Ben Carson.

You know, my guess is that Ben Carson probably won't last much longer, and some of that support is going to go into the Cruz camp. You know, Rand Paul I think is going to stick it out for a little bit. Carly Fiorina, I don't see her staying in much longer. She doesn't really have a path forward. But you know, the question is, who is going to -- where is the support going to go?

And going back to Scottie's point about Donald Trump and putting in all this time in the media, you know, media doesn't win elections. And that's what we're learning here. He had no ground game at all in Iowa at all. I went around to different caucuses. There were no Donald Trump's people at these caucuses. There would no supporters. There's no organizational strategy. So he wants to really win New Hampshire and not look like a fool again. He's got to get that ground support, and that's what Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich and Christie as they've been in New Hampshire. They have operations on the ground. And they're going to start working with these other campaigns who see that they have no path forward because if those campaign aren't leaving money, they can't pay for staff.

BANFIELD: I want you to weigh in on path forward for your guy, for Sanders? What's the path forward to him? I already asked about him earlier on in the program. He had all the machine in place last night. It didn't go so well. So, what about next time around?

KONST: Well actually it's an interesting point, you know, I went to the caucuses, and I went to some of the campaign rallies on both sides. The caucuses were really interesting in Iowa, and we're seeing some of the challenging from the Sanders Campaign. And I think it's fully legitimate. There was no election monitoring happening.

You know, I went to Drake University. I knew there's a spillover. There was a line out the door. And they're supposed to shut the doors at 7:00 p.m.. And they started to. And there were you know, it was really fascinating to see the dynamic between how the young people were caucusing on these campuses that had very small rooms. They didn't expect them to turn out. And so, the dynamic between the state party and the Sanders campaign was not very good. And I think that it was staffed a little bit in the favor of Sanders. So, in New Hampshire, he's got to get behind that.

BANFIELD: Alex and Scottie, I want to you to weigh in real quickly on your guess as to the next one to hit the, you know, hit the bricks. Set to drop the effort and to move on and maybe throw a support behind somebody else? What do you think, Alex?

CASTELLANOS: I think on the Republican side, it may be one of the governors. It might be after New Hampshire or Christie, or Kasich because they head south, that won't work.

BANFIELD: Really, you're not going to say Carson? Wait, I thought this whole vacation thing ...

CASTELLANOS: No, no, Carson will stay.

BANFIELD: ... was really trying to throw that, he threw him under the (inaudible).do that.

CASTELLANOS: No, no, Carson will stay. He is running for a different reason. He is kind of the moral and spiritual leader of the Republican Party. He is running to add something to the mix, and I think he can stay a long time. BANFIELD: OK, ten seconds left. What do you think, Scottie?

HUGHES: And that's where Nomiki is wrong. Carson after last night and the antic that Ted Cruz pulled against Carson, I guarantee Carson supporters are very upset with Cruz, and they will not go and back him regardless of what happens.

BANFIELD: Carson was upset too. He came out right away and said that's a dirty trick. Yeah, that he actually used the word, dirty trick. I love it.

All right, I thank you. Good to have you. Thank you so much. Better book your schedules off for us next week because we're going to do this all over again.

Coming up, be sure to join us tomorrow night, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The Democratic presidential candidates are going to get together again, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, no Martin O'Malley at this point. Of course he said no way. He is done. He is suspended.

They're going to take part in a town hall that's hosted by Anderson Cooper. We're going to have it right here on CNN, so make sure that you stick around for that.

[12:50:11] And by the way Hillary Clinton is going to join Wolf Blitzer for a live interview in our next hour right here on CNN. It's her first live interview since the Iowa caucuses last night, and her self-declared victory in Iowa.

Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: We have an update to a caucus night controversy. I just went to commercial break talking about that whole issue about Dr. Ben Carson taking a little break.

And now there's an apology. This is pretty amazing actually. The Cruz campaign is issuing an apology to Dr. Carson for having said, you know, along the lines of, you know, he is jumping out of the race. So I just saw on CNN he is jumping out.

So here's the quote from the Cruz campaign. "Last night when our political team saw the CNN post saying Dr. Carson was not carrying on to New Hampshire and South Carolina," P.S. we didn't say that, we didn't he wasn't going to South Carolina. But this is the statement that we're getting.

[12:55:00] "Our campaign updated the grassroots leaders just as we would with any breaking news story. That's fair game. What the team should have done was send around the follow-up statement from the Carson campaign clarifying that he was indeed staying in the race when that came out." The statement goes on to say "This was a mistake from our end, and for that I apologize to Dr. Carson." That's pretty big, I mean that's a nice thing to do considering the fact that Dr. Carson was very up set at the Cruz campaign for saying that he was dropping out of the race just because he wanted to go home to Florida when he said for a change of clothes before he goes in another two days off to New Hampshire to continue his campaign.

So there you go. Hopefully that's all water under the bridge between those two campaigns, who knows?

Thank you for watching everyone. It's been good to have you with us. I want to remind you though that coming up Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is going to join Wolf Blitzer live. He's going to take over right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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