On the eve of primary day here, Bernie Sanders led a chaotic procession through the streets of Queens, where he ambled along greeting everyone from teenage twin boys to a woman who emerged from a beauty salon, dye still in her hair.
Powered by a BLT sandwich consumed over a late lunch at Jahn’s, a historic diner in the Jackson Heights neighborhood, Mr. Sanders set out down 37th Avenue, stopping frequently to take selfies or sign an autograph, undeterred by the swarms of children, delivery men, street vendors and others, or by the heat of setting sun.
A UPS delivery man, his hands piled with packages that nearly covered his face, stopped say a quick, “Hey, Bernie.” A man selling individually wrapped roses from a pile slung over his shoulder trailed Mr. Sanders for several blocks.
“Bernie, I need to talk to you!” yelled a street vendor, his stand filled with cell phone cases and other small items.
A Brooklyn native, Mr. Sanders faces a crucial test in Tuesday’s primary, which carries 247 delegates. The senator is seen as an underdog against Hillary Clinton in New York’s race – particularly because it is a closed primary, meaning only registered Democrats can vote – though he continued to predict on Monday morning that he could succeed if turnout is high.
“You gotta beat Trump,” a man on the street called out to Mr. Sanders. “You gotta beat that bastard.”
Bernie Sanders supporters packed a Queens park on Monday night for the Democratic presidential candidate's final New York City rally before Tuesday's primary.
"You all look beautiful, and you all look like you want a political revolution," Sanders said to a cheering crowd at Hunter's Point South Park along Long Island City's waterfront.
Sanders told the audience that a large voter turnout for Tuesday's New York primary would lead to a victory against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
"Tomorrow, let us all do everything we can to make sure that New York State has the largest turnout in a Democratic primary in its history," he said. "Tomorrow, New York State can help take this country a giant step forward in the political revolution."
He spoke about a "broken criminal justice system" and vowed to bring reform to local police departments all over the country. While he said the "vast majority" of officers are honest and hardworking, he said that any cop who breaks the law "must be held accountable."
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Student Szymon Paczkowski, 25, came from Yonkers to hear Sanders speak.
"I think out of all the candidates, he's the best to represent the values most people share," said Paczkowski, originally from Holland. "I wanted to be with people to feel the [solidarity]."
On Sunday, I went to Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and New York City Council Members Jumaane Williams and Ritchie Torres.
I came away from this visit more determined than ever to address the affordable housing crisis and to build an economy that works for all of us, not just those on top.
In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the estimated 600,000 people who live in New York City’s public housing facilities should not be forced to struggle with leaky roofs, mold, unreliable heating, broken down elevators and vermin. As a nation, we must do better than that.
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Today, Brooklyn is the most unaffordable housing market in America. The median price of a home in Brooklyn is $615,000, but the median household income is just $833 a week. The typical Brooklyn family would have to spend 98% of its income just to be able to own a modest house there. No one can do that.
In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression. Last year, more than 100,000 people in New York slept in homeless shelters — including more than 40,000 children. This is simply unacceptable.
We must solve the affordable housing crisis, in New York and across our country. We must address the crisis of homelessness. And we must increase the incomes of the working poor by raising the minimum wage to a living wage of at least $15 an hour.
We also need to make it easier for people in New York and elsewhere to buy their first home. We can do that by expanding down-payment assistance programs; offering pre-purchase housing counseling; reforming the way credit scores are calculated, and preventing predatory lending.
I have fought for affordable housing since I was first elected mayor of Burlington, Vt. in 1981. Today we are facing a crisis. It is our duty to make housing affordable in New York and across this nation. If we can bail out Wall Street, we can make sure that everyone in this country has a safe, secure and affordable place to live.
A growing body of evidence tells us that fracking is a danger to our water supply — our most precious resource. It’s a danger to the air we breathe. It has resulted in more earthquakes. It’s highly explosive. And it’s contributing to climate change.
The toxic chemicals used in fracking are known to cause lung cancer and birth defects. Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences have shown clear evidence that hydraulic fracturing can lead to a contaminated water supply.
We cannot allow our children to be poisoned by toxic drinking water just so a handful of fossil fuel companies can make even more in profits. There is simply no good way to contain the cocktail of toxic chemicals pumped into the ground.
Moreover, the threat of methane emissions from fracking presents a profound danger to our climate. Methane traps more than 84 times the heat of carbon dioxide. While natural gas might burn cleaner than coal, the enormous explosion of fracking and the resulting release of methane presents a significant danger to our planet.
If we are serious about safe and clean drinking water and clean air, if we are serious about protecting the health of our children and families, and if we are serious about combating climate change, we need to phase out fracking nationwide.
Unfortunately, Secretary Hillary Clinton disagrees. Even worse, as secretary of State, she worked to export fracking throughout the world to reward companies such as Chevron, Halliburton, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. That, in my view, is unacceptable.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders joined striking Verizon workers Monday on the picket line in Manhattan and praised them for standing "up for justice and against corporate greed."
Grabbing a bullhorn, Sanders told the cheering throng, "We will not tolerate large profitable corporations sending jobs to low-wage countries....throwing American workers out of the streets."
Sanders said Verizon was cutting workers' health care benefits while paying CEO Lowell McAdam $18 million in salary and compensation.
"That is the kind of greed that is destroying the American middle class," Sanders said while the workers gathered on Seventh Ave. and 36th St. roared with approval.
Sanders delivered his broadside ahead of a rally in Times Square where 7,500 striking workers put on a massive show of solidarity on the sixth day of their job action.
There was no immediate response from Verizon or McAdam to Sanders, but this was not the first time the Vermont senator has stood-up for the strikers.
Sanders got a rock star reception last Wednesday when he visited the picket line in Brooklyn. Many of the strikers belong to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which has endorsed Sanders.
The Hudson Valley is at the heart of Sanders’ New York playbook, but it will be a tug of war between demographics on one side and and longstanding personal ties to Clinton on the other.
“I think we’re going to win upstate. The question is how close can we get in the New York City. And if we get really close or do really well we’re going to win,” top Sanders strategist Tad Devine said. “No one’s denying that Secretary Clinton has very strong connections in her home state.”
Teachout won a huge swatch of the New York, including every county on the state’s eastern border north of Westchester County, all the way up to the Canadian line. She also took a corridor jutting due West of Albany, past Ithaca.
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Sanders has spent more than Clinton campaigning Upstate than Clinton, and visited smaller towns, like Binghamton and Poughkeepsie, and he heads into Election Day with some advantages Teachout did not have.
Teachout was widely unknown in the state, with 85 percent of Democrats saying they had no opinion of her in a mid-August Quinnipiac survey, just a month before the September election. The national spotlight has made Sanders almost universally known.
And while Cuomo was still in office, there are some signs Clinton’s connections to the state have begun to fray in the eight years since she left the Senate, especially with younger voters.
Vinnie Whipple, an 18-year-old from Ballston Spa who was spending her Sunday as a human statue outside a bookstore on Saratoga Spring’s main drag, said everyone her parents’ age is a Republican and everyone her age likes Sanders.
Over the past week I’ve traveled the length of New York state, from Albany to Buffalo, and Poughkeepsie to Park Slope, and came away with two certainties: Donald Trump is going to win his home state in a walk, while the winner in the Democratic primary really depends on which New York shows up at the polls.
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New York’s Democratic establishment is subtler than in some places. Instead of suppressing voters, here they just discourage them—by making you vote out four times between now and November. Historically, that has meant reliably low turnout in New York’s primaries—which is just how the organization likes it.
If that happens on Tuesday—if the party machine gets out its vote (which is the whole function of a party machine), and the unions who cut off the WFP get out their vote, and only dyed-in-the-wool Democrats troop to the polls, Hillary Clinton will win in a walk. Any other result will take a miracle—especially since the same WFP members who have been working so hard for Sanders won’t be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary unless they changed parties last October. Even coming close here would represent a moral victory.
But if Sanders wants to be president, his supporters in New York are going to have to deliver more than another moral victory. They’re going to have to overwhelm the establishment, and swamp the polls in unprecedented numbers. If that happens tomorrow night—if you see HUGE lines in every part of the state—that really might be the beginning of a political revolution.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign on Monday questioned “serious apparent violations” of campaign finance laws under a joint fundraising deal between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The questionable dealings were detailed in a letter from Brad Deutsch, the attorney for Sanders’ campaign, to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC. The letter questioned whether the Clinton presidential campaign violated legal limits on donations by improperly subsidizing Clinton’s campaign bid by paying Clinton staffers with funds from the joint DNC-Clinton committee.
Unlike Clinton’s presidential campaign committee, Hillary for America, the joint committee may accept large donations of up to $356,100. The first $2,700 of this amount is eligible for transfer to the Clinton campaign, $33,400 can be transferred to the DNC, with any remaining amount, up to $10,000, to each participating state party. According to public disclosure reports, however, the joint Clinton-DNC fund, Hillary Victory Fund (HVF), appears to operate in a way that skirts legal limits on federal campaign donations and primarily benefits the Clinton presidential campaign.
The financial disclosure reports on file with the Federal Election Commission indicate that the joint committee invested millions in low-dollar, online fundraising and advertising that solely benefits the Clinton campaign. The Sanders campaign “is particularly concerned that these extremely large-dollar individual contributions have been used by the Hillary Victory Fund to pay for more than $7.8 million in direct mail efforts and over $8.6 million in online advertising” according to the letter to the DNC. Both outlays benefit the Clinton presidential campaign “by generating low-dollar contributions that flow only to HFA [Hillary for America] rather than to the DNC or any of the participating state party committees.”
The questionable outlays “have grown to staggering magnitudes” and “can no longer be ignored,” Deutsch added.
As Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton battle for a win in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary in New York, Clinton's home state advantage has given her an edge in the polls, but Sanders has a secret weapon.
It's called the Working Families Party, a progressive party backed by labor unions and community activists whose New York chapter has gone all-in for Sanders. The party is known across the state and particularly in New York City for its impressive get-out-the-vote efforts. If Sanders tops Clinton in her home state or even beats expectations and comes close, he will have the WFP to thank.
In New York, where the party was founded in 1998, it has become a major presence. Third parties enjoy substantial influence in the Empire State due to fusion voting, which lets candidates appear on the ballot for multiple parties. At times, the WFP runs its own candidates; at others, it backs progressive Democrats in primary races. In Tuesday's Democratic primary, only registered Democrats, not the small number of progressives registered with the WFP, can vote for the Democratic nominee. The party's biggest successes have come in New York City, where WFP-backed candidates hold substantial power, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
"They have the best political operation in New York," says Bill O'Reilly, a Republican consultant in the state. "They are a mighty machine."
For months, the party has been engaged in voter outreach on Sanders' behalf—knocking on doors, phone banking, talking to local leaders, and helping Sanders draw local endorsements. Bill Lipton, the WFP's New York state director, says the party has been able to use the momentum behind Sanders to recruit thousands of volunteers.
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The WFP is currently limited to New York and a handful of other states, but it aims to expand into new states. Over the next few years, the party hopes to run progressive candidates against Democrats in primaries across the country in order to push the party to the left, much as the tea party's primary challengers in recent years have pushed the Republican Party rightward. If the party is able to propel Sanders to an upset win in New York, or even a close second-place finish, it would mark a triumphant entrance for the WFP onto the national stage.
I expressed the fear after Sanders won Wisconsin that Clinton might try to turn New York into an Israel referendum. She could have. And maybe she would have if the polls were closer. But she has not.
Not only that. The needle moved significantly, and astoundingly, in the other direction. Here, Sanders deserves tremendous credit.
He said at last Thursday’s debate: “As somebody who is 100 percent pro-Israel, in the long run—and this is not going to be easy, God only knows, but in the long run if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”
An acknowledgement that Palestinians are human beings—during a New York primary, no less!
Clinton could have—and 12 or so years ago, undoubtedly would have—responded by saying something like until the Palestinians get better leaders and stop teaching hatred to their children, my posture won’t change. Not only did she not do that, but Sanders forced her to acknowledge the point.
She said: “As Secretary of State for President Obama, I’m the person who held the last three meetings between the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Prime Minister of Israel. … Three long meetings. And I was absolutely focused on what was fair and right for the Palestinians. I was absolutely focused on what we needed to do to make sure that the Palestinian people had the right to self-government.
Sanders is to be commended for this anti-pandering—it could herald the start of a positive change in the way Democrats at least talk about the Middle East.
On the eve of New York’s Primary Day, Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders camp released a powerful campaign ad.
The ad, clearly targeted to Muslim New Yorkers is meant to tug at the very heart of Islamophobia and meant to rally Muslim new Yorkers around Sanders as the candidate who has their back.
According to the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, there are at least a 100,000 registered Muslim New York voters. Over 70 percent are estimated to be Democrats. Sanders outreach to this particular sector of the community is a pivotal reason why it appears the majority are throwing their support to Sanders over his competitor, front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“It’s a very competitive primary I think it’s more competitive than anyone believed it to be. I think tomorrow what we’ll see if increased turnout, record turnout from a lot of new immigrant communities especially the Muslim-American communities,” said Ali Najmi, Co-Founder of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York.
Ali Najmi co-founded the organization in 2013 and is among those feeling the Bern.
The group and others like it have been, for months, knocking on doors, making calls, engaging local Muslim leaders and holding round-table discussions.
“We saw there was a tremendous need to increase voter registration increase enrollment in the democratic party increase awareness of the importance of a primary election vs general election,” said Najmi.
L ast Tuesday, just a week before the hotly contested New York Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders took time off the campaign trail to meet with people who have pledged not to vote for anyone.
For many members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a league of six confederated Indigenous nations whose traditional territory stretches across upstate New York and southeastern Canada, the United States is a foreign government. “We are not subjects. We are allies,” explains Oren Lyons, the 86-year-old Faithkeeper of the Confederacy’s Turtle Clan and a longtime environmental activist. “In order to protect the integrity of our treaties, we’ve maintained our independence very carefully.” That includes refusing to participate in what they consider colonial elections.
But that didn’t stop Sanders from meeting with some Haudenosaunee leaders, including Lyons, en route to rally in Syracuse, New York last Tuesday. For Sanders, it was only the most recent effort in a growing campaign to link his “political revolution” with the concerns of Indigenous peoples.
There are 567 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States—none of which are in Vermont, the state Sanders has represented in Congress since 1990. But his early opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and vocal support for renewal of the Violence Against Women Act made him familiar to some Indigenous activists long before he launched his outsider bid for the Democratic nomination last year.
One such advocate is Nicole Willis (Umatilla), who coordinated outreach to American Indian voters for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. “I had made the decision last year that I was going to stay out of this election cycle,” she said. “I had a few colleagues who became Clinton advisers, but I grew very frustrated with the lack of action. So I reached out to the Sanders campaign and asked them what their plan was. And they said, ‘Well, why don’t you help us?’” She now serves as a top Native policy adviser.
While supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have lost track of how many times they’ve heard his oft-touted figure of $27 — the average donation to Sanders’ campaign — the marijuana-minded vote is looking to alter that average, if only for one day.
With cannabis holiday 4/20 quickly approaching this week, some Sanders supporters have started an online campaign encouraging others to donate $4.20 (or $42 or $420) to Sanders’ war chest on April 20 to “send a message to the establishment that alone we’re harmless bees but together we’re a ferocious swarm that will not be silenced.”
Many legalization activists have attached themselves to Sanders in part because of his cannabis platform, which would involve the drug being completely removed from the federal government’s list of the most dangerous drugs.
“Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have criminal records as a result of marijuana use,” Sanders said in October 2015. “That’s wrong. That has got to change.”
While Sanders wants marijuana completely descheduled, his Democratic opponent Clinton supports its rescheduling.