The debate moderator looked at the woman in a dark pantsuit standing beside Senator Bernie Sanders and said, “Secretary Clinton, we’ll give you one minute for an opening statement.”
“I have a lot of experience in leadership,” the woman said Saturday from behind a music stand in a room overlooking Lake Champlain. “We need someone who is going to be able to stand up to the terrorists, who has really been tested in this way, and no one else on the stage can make that claim.”
The woman, Michaeleen Crowell, 41, is a policy wonk whose day job is chief of staff in Mr. Sanders’s Senate office. But in her off hours these days, she is the senator’s practice Hillary.
“She’s keeping me on my toes,” Mr. Sanders said.
That is increasingly necessary. On Sunday, Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton will face off in another Democratic debate as polls show that the liberal Vermont senator has closed a gap with her in Iowa and pulled ahead in New Hampshire, the first two states to vote in the presidential primary season. Mrs. Clinton’s anxious campaign has begun challenging Mr. Sanders on issues including gun control, health care and electability in November. It is up to Ms. Crowell to get him ready.