Following Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate, staffers from both campaigns made their case as to why their candidate did the best job. Our Bobby Cuza was in the spin room and filed the following report.
Who won Thursday night’s debate? Easy —
"On issue after issue, he sort of dominated the debate," said Jeff Weaver, Sanders's Campaign Manager.
Bernie Sanders, says his campaign manager.
Or, wait — Hillary Clinton's campaign manager says it's the other way around.
Welcome to the spin room. Inside this cavernous warehouse adjacent next door to the debate site, hundreds of journalists toiled away Thursday night with the help of a remote feed.
Once the debate was over, they swarmed campaign staff and supporters, who were eager to explain why their candidate scored a knockout.
"I thought the whole debate tonight was about his bold vision and her sort of incrementalist approach," Weaver said. "On climate change... substantive way."
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Clinton backer, was among the most in-demand surrogates. Where Sanders sees Clinton as an incrementalist, Cuomo sees her as a realist.
"I really don't care what you would like to do," Cuomo said. "Elect a president who can get something done."
For a while, Sanders seemed poised to close the gap with Clinton in New York, but a number of polls out this week show her maintaining a double-digit lead, including one out Thursday that had her up 17 points, which may be why the Sanders campaign seems to be managing expectations about Tuesday’s primary.
Said Tad Devine, Sanders's Chief Strategist: "We stipulate that this is her home state… everybody's with Hillary Clinton."
Still, the Sanders camp is claiming momentum, pointing to the huge turnout at this week's Washington Square Park rally.
The final verdict of course, will come not from the spinmeisters, but from the voters on Tuesday.