Sanders Grows Staff and Spending in March 1 Primary States

National Journal

By Zach Montellaro

November 30, 2015

Sanders Grows Staff and Spending in March 1 Primary States 

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) cam­paign is ramp­ing up spend­ing and staff­ing to try to catch up to former Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton (D).

“Sanders’ cam­paign man­ager Jeff Weaver told Re­u­ters that the cam­paign re­wrote its budgets last week, doub­ling them to add more staff in each of the states hold­ing nom­in­at­ing con­tests on March 1. … Weaver said the cam­paign has also be­gun adding two dozen ad­di­tion­al paid field staffers in the first con­test in Iowa, which holds caucuses on Feb­ru­ary 1.” (Re­u­ters)

HAM­MER­ING O’MAL­LEY. A leaked memo from the Sanders camp ham­mers former Mary­land Gov. Mar­tin O’Mal­ley’s (D) im­mig­ra­tion plans.

The memo reads: “Un­like the O’Mal­ley plat­form, the Sanders plat­form speaks to provid­ing de­ferred ac­tion to un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants en­gaged in labor dis­putes, elim­in­at­ing the ‘sig­ni­fic­ant mis­de­mean­or’ bar in en­force­ment, and provid­ing dis­cre­tion for im­mig­rants with non-im­mig­ra­tion con­vic­tions, such as iden­tity theft, driv­ing without a li­cense felon­ies, and sur­viv­al crimes. … Un­like the O’Mal­ley plat­form, the Sanders plat­form does not af­ford spe­cial treat­ment to ‘high-skilled’ work­ers that big cor­por­a­tions de­mand, and in­stead in­cludes work­ers of all back­grounds.”

When asked for a com­ment on the memo, an O’Mal­ley spokes­wo­man Lis Smith fired back, “They only feel the need to white­wash Sanders’ nat­iv­ist and of­fens­ive im­mig­ra­tion state­ments by com­par­ing their im­mig­ra­tion ‘plan’ to Mar­tin O’Mal­ley’s? It will take a lot more than a bad copy and paste job for them to catch up with someone who has ac­tu­ally been a lead­er on this is­sues.” (Politico)

MORE WO­MEN DONORS. Sanders’ camp said more wo­men have giv­en to his cam­paign than Clin­ton’s.

“As of the last re­port­ing peri­od at the end of Septem­ber, some 301,154 wo­men gave money to Sanders in his quest for the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to his cam­paign. That would top the ap­prox­im­ately 240,000 wo­men who have giv­en money to Clin­ton since she launched her cam­paign.” (Wash­ing­ton Post)

NOT AL­WAYS ON THE FRONT­LINES. As “Sanders tries to dis­tin­guish him­self from Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton and rally his pro­gress­ive base, one is­sue where he has claimed a clear ad­vant­age is in the long battle over gay rights. … But on his home turf in Ver­mont, the first state to re­cog­nize civil uni­ons and a trail­blazer in same-sex mar­riage rights, gay rights ad­voc­ates say Mr. Sanders was less than a lead­er, and not en­tirely present, on the is­sue.”

“Mr. Sanders was not ‘a real act­ive par­ti­cipant in the fight’ for civil rights, said Dav­id Moats, the au­thor of ‘Civil Wars,’ who won a Pulitzer Prize for his ed­it­or­i­als on the is­sue in The Rut­land Her­ald.”

“In Novem­ber 2000, just be­fore Elec­tion Day, Mr. Sanders and the state’s two sen­at­ors ac­com­pan­ied Robert T. Stafford, the 87-year-old Re­pub­lic­an eld­er states­man, to a news con­fer­ence where Mr. Stafford asked, ‘What is the harm?’ in al­low­ing gay uni­ons. When it came time for Mr. Sanders to speak, he de­plored the de­mon­iz­a­tion of gay people but com­plained that the vir­u­lent op­pos­i­tion to civil uni­ons di­ver­ted at­ten­tion from pre­scrip­tion drug costs, health care and oth­er eco­nom­ic is­sues.” (New York Times)

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