Tomorrow was supposed to be one of the brightest days for Bernie Sanders since he ended his campaign against against Hillary Clinton. Tomorrow is supposed to be the nationwide “kickoff party” for his newly formed “Our Revolution” organization, built to carry forward his progressive campaign by concentrating on down ballot races with progressive candidates running, even down to school boards and Mayors. The kickoff is supposed to be 2500 “house parties” in all 50 states centering around a streamed online speech from Bernie himself officially opening it up. There’s just one problem.
The problem is Jeff Weaver. As reported on Rachel Maddow tonight, and published in NBCNews.com there is already trouble in Paradise, before the official kickoff. Last Monday Sanders held a conference call with his senior staff at the organization, about 15 people to announce that he was bringing in his old buddy, Jeff Weaver to run the thing. The pushback was immediate, starting with the conference call. These were all people who had worked high up in the campaign, and none of them had fond memories of Weaver. Several of them had only stayed on for the new project with personal assurances from Bernie that Jeff Weaver would not be involved with Our Revolution.
It didn’t even take a week. Over the weekend 8 of the 13 senior staffers quit en masse, with the five remaining penning personal letters to Sanders, expressing their dismay with Weaver’s infusion, and expressing solidarity with the departed staffers. There are several reasons for the discord;
They say they envisioned Our Revolution as a small-dollar-funded group that would use grassroots organizing to help elect progressive candidates, along the lines of Democracy for America, which grew out of the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign.
Weaver has other ideas. He wanted to supplement the group's organizing and online fundraising efforts with independent expenditure TV advertising and larger checks from major donors. Internal critics say that contradicts the spirit of Sanders' movement, which was built around fighting big money in politics.
One of the problems is generational. The staff are younger people, who believe in Sanders vision, and Weaver is an old guard, more traditional political creature. There was widespread angst during the campaign over his management style and his berating of staff. He was also a major fan of mass t.v. advertising, even though the majority of Sanders supporters were younger and depended on social media. There was a high profile resignation in Bernie’s California team in June, when one of the leaders wanted money to invest in digital operations to reach his younger supporters, but was overruled in favor of much more expensive mass t.v. advertising. So he voted with his feet.
There is another potential problem with the new entity. The group is officially registered as a 501(C)(4) organization. So is Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. But one big difference. Karl Rove is not a federal officeholder. According to another, earlier report on ABCNews.go.com ,
As a sitting senator, Sanders can’t ask donors to contribute more than $2,700 each to a campaign committee per election, or more than $5,000 to a Super PAC, which can raise unlimited amounts of money but are barred from coordinating with campaigns.
Our Revolution's connection to a federal officeholder could require the group to disclose its donors and cap the amount of money it can accept from contributors under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, Ryan said.
In the same phone call to announce Weavers elevation, Jane Sanders announced her resignation as the groups chair, over concerns about the closeness of the Senators ties to the group. I’m no political insider, but I have a hard time imagining that this is exactly the rollout Bernie was looking for. Both the organizing team, and most of the digital team quit, and they were the two pillars of the entire organization. Jeff Weaver was sanguine about the departures, saying it was just common practice for a new organization, “putting the A-Team together”, but the simple fact of the matter is that those staffers were the A-Team, they got Bernie to where he is.
This is sad news for the Democrats. This was a group that was devoted to fighting for and supporting progressive liberal candidates all the way up and down the ballot. It would have given us a chance to grow a deep bench for future higher office. Now all of that is in jeopardy.
On the one hand, I feel sorry for Bernie Sanders, he is nothing if not a principled man who passionately believes in what he’s saying. But if what the staff members are saying is true, I’m also greatly disappointed in him. One of the keystones of leadership is your word. If he promised these people that Jeff Weaver would not be directly involved with the operation and then named him to take it over, if he breached that trust, then the staffers had no choice but to follow their conscience and convictions and quit. And for the new and remaining staffers, the question will always be in the back of their minds, “What other principles is he willing to sacrifice?”.
Thanks as always for reading!