The campaign's office in East Las Vegas is strategically located in a neighborhood the Sanders organizer referred to as "Little Mexico." It is also a few blocks from Rancho High School, a school of nearly 3,000 students, more than two-thirds of whom identify as Latino. This isn't symbolic — it's an important way to make sure Sanders's most devoted supporters can come to the office to call voters and canvass neighborhoods.
The Sanders campaign's "Latino outreach strategy" is a matter of who is speaking on the candidate's behalf — but it doesn't involve changing what those people are saying. Forty-one percent of America's Latino voters, and 44 percent of Nevada's, are millennials. And as far as the Sanders campaign is concerned, they're just like any other millennials: They care about a $15 minimum wage and free college tuition, and they want to get money out of politics.
In other words, the Sanders campaign's "pitch" to Latinos is strikingly similar to its pitch to everyone else: In the words of Nevada state director Joan Kato, Sanders is "someone who's always fought for equality and making sure the average person is not taken advantage of."
In Nevada, at least, this message appeals to many young Latinos who are excited about Sanders's ability to transform a political system they don't fully buy into. It's not just that they agree with the positions Sanders is espousing; it's that they believe he will be a reliable champion for them if he's elected.
"Bernie is the only candidate that really believes in the Fight for $15 movement," a young organizer told the group of volunteers in East Las Vegas, referring to the fact that Sanders's opponent in the primary, Hillary Clinton, has embraced a $12-an-hour minimum wage but won't go as high as $15. "We have to show that support just the way he's supporting us."
x YouTube VideoThe Campaign Ramps Up For The CaucusAnother day closer to the Nevada Democratic Caucus, and another poll shows a dead heat between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The campaigns are ramping up their efforts in the final days before the "First in the West" caucus.
Ahead of Saturday's caucus, Bernie Sanders' Las Vegas campaign offices are seeing a surge of people looking to volunteer.
"For many of them, we notice that it's their first time getting involved (in politics), and Bernie Sanders has become their reason to caucus,” said Sanders’ Nevada Communications Director Emilia Pablo.
Sanders' campaign is trying to chip away at Clinton's voting base. That includes issuing a list of 100 influential women who support Sanders, including Assemblywoman Heidi Swank (Clark County-D) who says she isn't bound to vote for Clinton, just because she's a woman.
"I think once you kind of take a breath and step back, folks see that being able to support the candidate of your choice is what feminism was and still is fighting for,” Swank said.
xMexican TV personality @marcoregil joined @BernieSanders volunteers during a phone banking party tonight. #RJnowpic.twitter.com/66pAG5Grp6
— Erik Verduzco (@Erik_Verduzco) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoA Sanders Surge In NevadaBernie Sanders says he's not just a one-issue candidate who appeals to white voters. The state of Nevada will decide whether he's right.
The Silver State holds its Democratic caucuses on Saturday, and a new CNN/ORC poll shows Hillary Clinton and the Vermont senator in a dead heat. If Clinton loses, it would be the third and perhaps most striking sign yet that her path to the Democratic nomination is anything but inevitable.
The Clinton campaign attributed her unexpectedly narrow Iowa win and 22-point loss in New Hampshire to the states’ overwhelmingly white electorates, which favor Sanders.
They can’t make the same argument about Nevada, where minority voters in 2008 accounted for 30% of caucusgoers, a number that could be higher on Saturday.
“They’ve got a real problem if they lose here because then Sanders can say ‘I’m not just a white candidate, I can win anywhere,’ ’’ said Jon Ralston, who runs a Nevada politics newsletter.
Right now, “they’re (Clinton) doing everything they can to stop the bleeding,” said Ralston. “It’s very difficult to turn around momentum in politics.”
xHas social media—and the way it shapes how we think—boosted Bernie Sanders? https://t.co/PR1KplmPBJpic.twitter.com/mCh6fmtNDk
— Slate (@Slate) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoHedge Fund Billionaires Are On The AttackA Super PAC called Future 45 started airing an ad this week saying Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders would hurt small businesses and kill jobs by raising the minimum wage and increasing taxes.
Future 45 is run by Brian O. Walsh, a longtime Republican operative who has in the past served as political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Most recently, he was president of the American Action Network, a dark money group that was the second-largest outside spender in 2010.
Over the last year, Future 45 has been funded primarily by hedge fund managers. Two billionaire Rubio-backers — Paul Singer, who runs Elliott Management, and Ken Griffin, who runs Citadel — have each contributed $250,000.
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As part of his plan to make public colleges tuition-free, Sanders proposes to impose a .5 percent speculation fee on hedge funds, something that would take direct aim at Singer’s and Griffin’s primary source of income.
Another large donor, coming in at $200,000, is Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who repeatedly lost races for U.S. Senate from Connecticut.
xThe @AFLCIO holds off endorsing in the Democratic primary https://t.co/qp9oOGpXP6 via @tomlobianco& @danmericaCNNpic.twitter.com/sP1hGG5d05
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoNate Silver: Bernie's Path To The NominationHow much trouble will Hillary Clinton be in if she loses in Nevada, where Democrats will caucus on Saturday? How close does Bernie Sanders need to come in South Carolina, which votes a week later? And which states are really “must-wins” for Sanders in March, April and beyond?
We can try to answer all of those questions with the help of the gigantic chart you’ll see below. On the left-hand side of the chart, you’ll find a projection for how each state might go if recent national polls are right, with Clinton ahead of Sanders by about 12 percentage points nationally. The right-hand side is more crucial: It shows how the states might line up if the vote were split 50-50 nationally. Since the Democrats’ delegate allocation is highly proportional to the vote in each state, that means Sanders will be on track to win the nomination if he consistently beats these 50-50 benchmarks. Conversely, Clinton will very probably win the nomination if Sanders fails to do so, especially since superdelegates would likely tip a nearly tied race toward Clinton.
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Favorable terrain for Sanders in late March. A series of Western states vote between March 22 and April 9, as does Wisconsin. Almost all of them figure to be favorable to Sanders — including Wisconsin, where he was already almost tied with Clinton in the polls before his New Hampshire win. A possible exception is Arizona, where Clinton beat Barack Obama in 2008 and where the electorate can be tricky to predict.
New York, California and a big blue finale. With some exceptions — Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana will be interesting to watch — the last quarter of the Democratic calendar mostly resides on the coasts. And there are some big prizes: New York, Pennsylvania and California foremost among them. All three offer advantages and disadvantages to each candidate. For instance, will California’s left-wing politics, which help Sanders, prevail over its racially diverse population, which helps Clinton?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If Sanders can hang tight with Clinton in Nevada on Saturday, his chance of eventually notching a win in California and securing the nomination will look a lot better.
xNurses are stealing the show in Vegas! The #BernieLightBrigade is taking over Las Vegas Blvd! #FeelTheBern#1upic.twitter.com/igoWzvhPAe
— RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoSanders Is Finally Getting Air TimeBernie Sanders has done what many political experts deemed impossible: He's turned the Democratic presidential nomination into a real race.
Now he's getting something that also once felt out of reach: News coverage.
Last week, on the heels of his emphatic win in the New Hampshire primary, Sanders drew more coverage from the network evening newscasts than any other presidential campaign in either party, according to new data analysis from Andrew Tyndall.
Tyndall, the author of the Tyndall Report, monitors news content across CBS, NBC and ABC. His latest research found that the nightly news broadcasts on those three networks gave a total of 11 minutes of coverage to Sanders from February 8-12.
That was more than the amount of coverage given to Hillary Clinton (eight minutes), Donald Trump (seven minutes) and Marco Rubio (five minutes). It was also the first week in the current election cycle that network news coverage of Sanders outpaced any other presidential candidate.
xBen Cohen stopped by three of our SC offices today to talk about ending Citizens United. Here he is in Greenville. pic.twitter.com/gUS9oaM6dt
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoCBS Has A Piece On Erica Garner's SupportThe daughter of Eric Garner, whose death as a result of a police chokehold in New York set off a spate of protests against police brutality, joined Bernie Sanders in South Carolina Tuesday to praise him as a "fearless public servant that is not afraid to stand against the establishment for the people."
Erica Garner is eager to build a legacy of political activism in the wake of her father's death, and part of that is helping to galvanize young black voters in this election. To this end, she considered carefully whether to support Sanders or Hillary Clinton. She settled on Sanders.
"Once I did my research, I reached out to his campaign, and I asked them how can I get involved," Garner explained to CBS News.
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Garner told CBS News that she preferred Sanders to Hillary Clinton in part because of his activism.
"If you look at Bernie Sanders's record, he is protester," Garner said. "Just like me -- I am a protester....I feel connected to him because he has been marching with Martin Luther King. He got arrested for fighting for equal housing rights. He has been talking about our issues for a very long time."
xNYC Mayor @BilldeBlasio is backing @HillaryClinton. But his kids might go for @BernieSandershttps://t.co/H7Hpz4bLdCpic.twitter.com/e4jM4XDUE1
— POLITICO (@politico) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoBernie Is Creating A New CoalitionThe conventional wisdom has been that Bernie Sanders is running some version of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign strategy — a strategy based on a coalition of wine-track young liberals and small-donor donations.
This conventional wisdom is wrong, or at least radically incomplete.
Sanders's coalition looks very different from what Obama created, or what most experts had expected. According to pollsters and political science professors, Sanders appears to have combined elements of both Obama and Clinton's 2008 voting blocs — he's building something new and untested as an electoral force in American politics.
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"The irony of this Democratic primary so far is that Hillary Clinton's path to victory involves winning the voters she lost in 2008. And Bernie Sanders's path to victory depends on winning the voters Hillary Clinton won in 2008," says Dave Wasserman, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "That's a remarkable turn of events in just eight years."
"It's remarkable: The Bernie coalition isn't at all what we were expecting," says Wasserman. "The fact that you have a core support group for Hillary Clinton in 2008 suddenly showing some intrigue for Bernie makes this race a whole lot more interesting."
On top of his support with this group of Clinton's 2008 backers, Sanders adds two other elements of Obama's 2008 coalition: liberals and young people. Meanwhile, Clinton's strongest supporters appear to be the well-educated and minority voters who backed Obama over her in 2008.
xDid y'all phonebank for @BernieSanders today? Send us pics of your smiling group! #FeelTheBernhttps://t.co/NLAyeqWzMm
— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) February 18, 2016 x YouTube VideoA Lansing Office To OpenPresidential candidate Bernie Sanders will open an office in Lansing Wednesday, according to a press release.
"The Lansing Campaign Office is yet another sign of commitment of Senator Sanders and his message to fight for the Middle Class, and not to be bankrolled by the Billionaires," read the press release.
"With the help of local grassroots organizations, such as 'Lansing for Bernie' and 'MSU Students for Sanders', we are pleased that this highly visible office to the community will be a beacon of hope to the many disaffected voters who are turning to Senator Sander's message."
The office will open Wednesday and is located at 2722 E Michigan Ave, Suite 101. Doors will open at 6:30 and speeches will begin at 7 p.m. The office will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and house volunteers and phone banks.
xBernie Sanders gains some ground in Nevada https://t.co/d1rChbbO2jpic.twitter.com/WHlQS1jRqy
— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) February 18, 2016 x YouTube Video"From Mid Range He Could Kill You"Every winter Wednesday night in late 1970s Burlington, Vermont, a small group of men met at the gym behind St Anthony’s Catholic Church to play basketball. They huddled against the cold in work boots, sweaters and jackets and were relieved when the most enthusiastic of them arrived with the key he had secured from the church office.
Inside, they quickly changed into gym shorts and T-shirts, careful to keep snow off the tile floor that made up the court. There were almost always 12 to 15 of them, most in their mid-to-late 30s – men with college degrees still unsure of their position in life, clinging to youth as responsibility approached. Among them were several woodworkers, a teacher, a college professor, an aspiring filmmaker, a religious man, a car mechanic and a wild-haired film-strip maker from New York named Bernie Sanders.
All these years later they remember him well. He was not the best player but certainly not the worst, with a deadly set-shot, rugged elbows and a brusque, Brooklyn twang that echoed through the tiny gym every time he spoke.
Give me da bawwwwwwl!” shouts Clem Nilan, one of the game’s participants, doing his best impersonation of Sanders on the court.
They laugh when they watch him on the debates. For the Sanders everyone sees now speaking with his arms, flailing his hands and waggling an index finger is the same one they recall from those long ago Wednesdays angling stork-like for rebounds and barking for passes.
xIf there is a high turnout on Saturday, I think we can win. I urge you all: come out with your family and caucus. https://t.co/X3ACxiQQg5
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 17, 2016 x YouTube VideoThe Man Who Who Sanders On His RoofMarlo Wilkerson is nearly two years old and can barely speak a full sentence. But if you mention Bernie Sanders to her, she shouts the presidential candidate’s message to billionaires: “Enough is enough! You can’t have it all!” And if you ask her three-year-old sister Lily, “What do we do to Donald Trump?” she screams, “Take him to the dump!”
Their father, Daren Wilkerson, a resident of Castro Valley in northern California, has trained his daughters to preach Sanders’ message on cue – and this week, he’s using more than just his adorable daughters to drum up support for the Vermont senator. The 39-year-old super Sanders supporter has painted a giant blue Bernie logo on top of his house’s roof – an eye-catching sign in this left-leaning Bay Area suburb.
“I wanted a bold statement that says I’m voting for Bernie,” the high school English teacher said while standing below his 4ft-by-20ft rooftop painting, wearing pins that said “Bern Nerd” and “Bernie speaks for ME”. He added: “This is not an election where you go quietly to the polls and vote … We’ve gotta get ahead.”
Wilkerson – who now has occasional fans driving by and cheering his roof after a local television report aired on Monday – is one of a growing number of Sanders supporters using large, colorful works of art and other creative forms of expression to encourage voters to “feel the Bern”.
After watching a Sanders speech on YouTube last summer, Wilkerson said he felt more passionate about Hillary Clinton’s challenger than he has about any politician in his life.
“I just started crying,” said Wilkerson, who dressed up as Sanders on Halloween and has several traditional Sanders lawn signs in front of his house. “I thought that if I sat back and gave him my vote and didn’t do anything else for him, I couldn’t sleep at night. I knew I had to put my whole weight behind this man.” xBernie Sanders dismisses controversy over rapper's comments at rally as 'gotcha politics' https://t.co/tpNOcGXZwj
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) February 17, 2016 x YouTube VideoJane Is Central To The CampaignWhen Jane Sanders saw an early cut of the "America" ad for her husband's presidential campaign, she felt something wasn't quite right. The problem? Her husband was talking in it.
The uplifting spot for Bernie Sanders features sunny images of his packed rallies over a soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel's "America." Jane Sanders found herself being carried away by the mood and the music, not by the clip of him speaking.
"So I just asked to cut Bernie out," she said. "He's talking all the time in other places."
Nine months into his insurgent presidential campaign, that ad stands out as a symbol of Bernie Sanders' effort to spark a grassroots political movement competing with the more traditional campaign of Hillary Clinton. And Jane Sanders' hand in the final product shows her influence in the campaign - one that may increase as she headlines more events on her own.
She's a former community organizer who has worked alongside her husband for more than 30 years - as a city department head when he was Burlington, Vermont, mayor, a volunteer congressional aide, and a campaign adviser.
"She is not afraid to be constructively critical," Bernie Sanders said. "She lets me have it if she thinks I make a mistake." And he joked that happens "every day, including 10 minutes ago."
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