Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders in at least four states Tuesday — Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio — with a fifth, Missouri, too close to call.
The number that really mattered, though, was 320: her lead among pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. With 1,094 in the bag — not to mention 467 committed superdelegates — Clinton is well on her way to securing the 2,383 necessary to win her party's presidential nomination.
Sanders' chances of catching up, meanwhile, have become vanishingly slim.
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Tuesday, March 15, 2016
The race for Vermont governor is already proving to be pricey, with nearly all of the declared candidates exceeding the half-million-dollar mark five months before the primary election.
Tuesday marked the first time since last July that candidates for state office in 2016 were required to report how much they had raised and spent on their campaigns.
Two Republicans —Phil Scott and Bruce Lisman — and two Democrats — Sue Minter and Matt Dunne — are competing in their party’s August primaries to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin. More candidates are expected to join the race.
Lisman, a retired Wall Street executive, amassed the most money, the bulk of it coming from his own pocket. Lisman reported raising $625,345. He contributed $453,843 of that himself.
Tags: campaign finance , Vermont election , Peter Shumlin , Matt Dunne , Sue Minter , Phil Scott , Bruce Lisman , Shap Smith , Image , Web Only
“You know, I changed my plans a little bit,” he told hundreds of supporters gathered in a half-filled hangar. “We’re doing great in Florida. We’re doing great in Illinois. Missouri, I think we’re going to have a tremendous day. And I said, ‘I have to come out and we have to explain a couple things.’”
And explain he did.
“Ohio is going to make America great again,” Trump said. “Kasich cannot make America great again. He can’t do it. He can’t do it.”
The Republican frontrunner’s visit to Vienna came just hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held a rally 10 miles south of the airport in Youngstown — and two days after Trump accused the Vermonter of sending protesters to his events. But Trump didn’t mention Sanders’ name once Monday evening during his rambling, 50-minute exercise in free association.
Tags: Senator , Donald Trump , Ohio , Chris Christie , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Image , Web Only
Monday, March 14, 2016
"Bernie's our guy," the 74-year-old retiree said Monday morning after watching the Democratic presidential candidate deliver a speech in hardscrabble Youngstown, Ohio.
Wearing a black International Brotherhood of Teamsters jacket over a white "Keep Our Pension Promises" T-shirt, Zapotosky recalled the many times Sanders went to bat for his union. He looked guilty about what he said next.
"I'm sorry to say, tomorrow I'm not going to vote for him, though. I'm going to vote for Trump to knock our governor out of the box," he said, referring to New York real estate mogul Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both Republicans. "Then, in November, I'll vote Democrat, because I am a Democrat."
That's bad news for Sanders, who is counting on blue-collar voters such as Zapotosky to push him over the finish line Tuesday in Ohio's presidential primary. A new Quinnipiac University poll released Monday morning showed him gaining on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton but still trailing her in the state by a margin of 51 to 46 percentage points.
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"Welcome to the most important state in the union this Tuesday," he told 3,300 Democratic activists and officials gathered at the Greater Columbus Convention Center for an Ohio Democratic Party dinner. "And the most important state in the union on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November."
Brown may have been exaggerating, but he had a point. Though Florida and Illinois will dole out more Democratic delegates in Tuesday's five primaries, Ohio's status as a Midwestern bellwether — and a must-win general election state — could make it the biggest prize of the week.
Fearing a repeat of Sanders' come-from-behind victory in Michigan last week — fueled, in part, by a protectionist message that has found resonance in the Rust Belt — Clinton and her allies have been laboring to convince Ohioans that she is no free-trade zealot.
"I trust Hillary Clinton on trade and manufacturing," Brown said as he introduced her in Columbus. "I trust her on this because I know what she will do: fight for American jobs with a different trade policy, different tax policy and a different manufacturing policy."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Hillary Clinton , Sherrod Brown , Ohio Democratic Party , presidential campaign , Recommended Reading , Image , Video , Web Only
Sunday, March 13, 2016
The threat came a day after Trump blamed Sanders for mass protests that led the Republican candidate to cancel a Friday rally in Chicago. Speaking in Cleveland on Saturday, Trump called on Sanders to “get your people in line.”
Though published reports indicate that some of those protesting Trump in Chicago were Sanders supporters, the Vermont senator said in a written statement Saturday that his campaign “did not organize the protests.” In the same statement, Sanders called Trump a “pathological liar.”
Writing on Twitter Sunday morning, Trump further escalated the rhetoric.
“Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren’t told to go to my events,” Trump wrote. “Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!”
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Thursday, March 10, 2016
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton courted Hispanic voters at the Univision-sponsored debate, its moderators played a 30-year-old video from the archives of a Burlington public access station. In an interview with CCTV Center for Media & Democracy executive director Lauren-Glenn Davitian, Sanders praised Cuba’s then-president Fidel Castro for providing health care and education to his people.
Clinton seized the opportunity to tie Sanders to the communist dictator.
“I think in that same interview, he praised what he called the ‘revolution of values’ in Cuba, and talked about how people were working for the common good, not for themselves,” Clinton said. “I just couldn’t disagree more.”
Sanders responded that Cuba is “of course, an authoritarian, undemocratic country.”
“I hope very much, as soon as possible, it becomes a democratic country,” Sanders said. “On the other hand, it would be wrong not to state that, in Cuba, they’ve made some good advances in health care ... They have made some progress in education.”
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Tuesday, March 8, 2016
By the end of the evening, Sanders was leading Clinton 50 to 48 percent, with nearly every precinct reporting.
“This has been a fantastic night in Michigan,” Sanders said in brief remarks from Miami, shortly before the race was called in his favor. “What tonight means is that ... the political revolution that we’re talking about is strong in every part of the country.”
Once written off as a regional curio, Sanders demonstrated Tuesday that he can compete in the industrial Midwest. That should open up opportunities for him next week when delegate-rich Ohio and Illinois hold their primaries.
But Sanders continues to underperform in the South. Even as he won Michigan by a hair, Clinton dominated him in Mississippi on Tuesday, winning the state 83 to 17 percent. By the end of the night, the former secretary of state had won 87 more delegates to the Democratic National Convention, while Sanders took an additional 69.
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Sanders picked up the support of three superdelegates Tuesday. Vermont Democratic Party chair Dottie Deans, party vice chair Tim Jerman and Secretary of State Jim Condos all announced their support for Sanders.
At a Statehouse press conference, Condos and Jerman cited Sanders’ margin of victory in Vermont’s March 1 primary. Sanders won nearly 86 percent of the vote, outpolled Clinton in every Vermont town and won all 11 of the state’s district delegates to the convention.
The state’s 10 superdelegates don’t have to base their support on the primary’s outcome, but Condos and Jerman said it was a factor for them.
“It's unprecedented for a candidate to win their own state by such an immense margin,” said Condos, who is a superdelegate because he serves as vice chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.
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Monday, March 7, 2016
With an eye toward Tuesday’s hotly contested Michigan primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton lived by the words of the late U.S. House speaker Tip O’Neill: “All politics is local.” Both candidates showed up in Flint, a city plagued by a lead-poisoned water crisis, eager to display greater sympathy and resolve.
In his opening statement, Sanders said that what he’d learned about the situation had “literally shattered me.”
“It was beyond belief that children in Flint, Mich., in the United States of America in the year 2016 are being poisoned,” he said. “That is clearly not what this country should be about.”
A moment later, Clinton echoed the sentiment: “Well, I’ll start by saying amen to that.”
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