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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Sanders Grows Staff and Spending in March 1 Primary States

National Journal
By Zach Montellaro
November 30, 2015

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)

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

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