Thousands gathered to hear presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speak in south Fargo Friday afternoon. People lined up early and hundreds filled inside. The rally started with former MSNBC TV host and Fargo native Ed Schultz introducing U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
It was chilly outside but inside there was an energetic candidate and a fired up crowd at the two hour long rally. The atmosphere at the Ramada felt more like a party than a political rally. The mainly young crowd had people dancing, chanting and cheering.
Sanders covered an array of topics in his speech. He started his speech thanking Ed Schultz for his support.
"Sounds to me that you raise tough and good people here in Fargo," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. " We need to create an economy that works for everybody not just the 1%.
Sanders said if elected he would invest in American infrastructure like roads, make a college education free for everyone and a fairer tax system.
"The rich are getting richer, corporations are enjoying fantastic profits, you are going to start paying your fair share of taxes," Sanders said referring to Wall Street and corporate America.
Before the "Bern" landed to turn up the heat, hundreds of supporters filled the Ramada Hotel before his scorching speech.
"I'm here because I wanted this sort of revolution to happen for many many years, and it is one of the most exciting times, I think in our political history," says Jodi Puhalla of Hawley, Minnesota.
Many supporters believe Bernie Sanders speaks to them through his honesty.
When the crowd chanted "Bernie," Sanders quickly corrected the audience for those who look to him to be the liberator.
"We don't need a savior. We need a political movement," says Sanders.
He spoke of his usual platform on comprehensive immigration reform, minimum wage, infrastructure, workforce, climate change and free college tuition.
But just for this Peace Garden State, he got a little more personal.
Sanders explains, "In my view, we owe the Native American people a debt that can we can never fully repay. They have taught us so much. The most important thing I believe that they have taught us, as human beings we are part of nature."
Combating climate change is something Sanders says needs to happen in order to save our planet.
Bernie Sanders supporters were feeling the “Bern” of the North Dakota wind as they stood outside and waited to hear him speak.
Some traveling hundreds of miles and others getting up at the crack of dawn to get a glimpse of the man hoping to win the democratic presidential nomination.
Linda Roesch drove four hours just to see Bernie Sanders speak.
"I’ve been waiting a long time for a candidate like Bernie Sanders." Roesch said. She joined hundreds of people who waited hours in line to hear the Vermont Senator sway North Dakotans to his side.
"We’ve been in line since 7 am. We really believe in what Bernie stands for. We think him coming to conservative North Dakota is a really big deal,” Crystal Deng said.
"I think it's great that he took time out of his schedule to come out and campaign in the red states like North Dakota and South Dakota," Roesch said.
"I think it's really important to have the democratic voice heard because tradition is good but sometimes tradition can be broken," Deng said.
Senator Sanders' wife was set to speak to Bernie supporters here, but Grand Forks got to feel the Bern up close and personal.
Jane Sanders was set to speak at a coffee shop at UND, but instead introduced the presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders who laid out his path to becoming the Democratic nominee.
Bernie Sanders: "We have a chance, it is a very steep climb, but we have a chance to end up the democratic nominating process with more pledged delegates than Secretary Clinton."
..
Sanders is currently less than 300 pledged delegates behind frontrunner Hillary Clinton with more than 1,000 still up for grabs. However, Clinton owns a vast majority of super delegates, unelected Democratic Party members that get a nominating vote. Sanders has 40 super delegates pledged. Clinton has more than 500.
But, it's Sanders' hope that by winning more pledged delegates he can swing some super delegates his way during the convention in July.
Sanders: “In virtually in every poll that has come out in the last 6 weeks or so, we do better, in some cases much better against Donald Trump than does Secretary Clinton.”
As Senator Sanders blasted the media for not covering important issues and spoke about income inequality, voter ID laws and free college tuition, several UND students and Trump supporters gathered outside.
A call for a ban on hydraulic fracking Friday evening by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont drew a cheer during a rally in the nation's second largest oil-producing state.
The brief comment drew a round of cheers as Sanders, 74, fired up a crowd of more than 500 in the Bismarck Depot parking lot following rallies in Fargo and Grand Forks earlier in the day.
“We’ve got to ban fracking,” Sanders said while discussing energy policy.
“The debate is over. Climate change is real,” Sanders said.
Sanders’ talk of energy and climate change came on the same day as it was reported presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was tapping Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who is a climate change skeptic, to provide advice to him on energy policy.
Sanders said he’ll push a climate change plan to reduce carbon emissions and increase renewable energy use in the country. He said his plan would provide tens of billions of dollars to aid communities such as those in North Dakota during an overhaul from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
..
Gubernatorial candidate Marvin Nelson, D-Rolla, praised Sanders for his visit to North Dakota while introducing him.
He said it was fitting for a candidate like Sanders to visit a place with a state-owned mill and elevator as well as the nation’s only state-owned bank, which he called monuments “of what can happen when people band together” to fight back against economic injustice.
The crowd gathered to hear the Vermont senator speak was comprised of mainly young adults, but there was a mix of older adults and some bundled-up children.
Ione Gayton, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, drove from Fort Yates to see Sanders. Gayton said she supports his ideas on free college tuition and reforming the campaign finance system.
Sanders appeal to youth was demonstrated at Friday’s event. Several high school students attended the rally to hear Sanders speak, including Ethan Block, 18, of Minot.
Block came to Bismarck with a group of students all from Minot High School Magic City campus to see Sanders, most of them old enough to vote.
Block said he supports Sanders’ belief in universal health care and thinks the United States should follow in suit of other successful countries with a universal health system.
..
Joanne Brokaw, 82, from Dickey County, said she supports Sanders because he favors Obamacare, and she also agrees with his view on Social Security.
This was the first time she has heard him speak, but she’s been watching him since he started on the campaign trail.
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will return to Kentucky this weekend as they battle for bragging rights in the Bluegrass State.
Though Kentucky is a small state in helping a presidential candidate secure delegate votes at this summer’s nominating convention, it is playing a big role this year in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“We’re getting all this attention because Kentucky is a state that should favor Hillary but Bernie is still around,” said University of Kentucky political science professor Stephen Voss.
“The national headlines for Kentucky’s primary election are either going to say ‘Clinton slows down Sanders in Kentucky’ or ‘Sanders keeps the momentum,’” Voss said. “They both are seeking the headline they want to try to influence upcoming primary elections in other states that provide many more delegates than Kentucky offers.”
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, plans to kick off a two-day swing through Kentucky on Saturday. He campaigned in Lexington and Louisville last week.
He will hold rallies Saturday evening at The Historic Railpark and Train Museum in Bowling Green and Sunday afternoon at the Julian Carroll Convention Center in Paducah
Despite being far behind Clinton in the delegate race, Sanders continues to pledge to stay in the Democratic nomination contest until the final primary in June. While that has frustrated the Clinton campaign, general election polling indicates Sanders has a better shot than Clinton at beating Trump come November.
While Clinton currently has a 6.4-point lead over Trump, Sanders doubles that, according to polling data. As of May 9, Sanders is up by 13 points against Trump.
As was the case with Clinton, Sanders’ lead widened in mid-March, when Trump’s string of decisive primary wins suggested he was on his way to nabbing the Republican nomination. Since those victories, Trump has hovered at or below 40 percent against both Clinton and Sanders.
Sanders often reminds his supporters that polling data points to him beating Trump by a larger margin than Clinton. And, in the recent Quinnipiac poll on swing states, Sanders beats Trump by two points in Florida and Ohio, and by six points in Pennsylvania.
That same Quinnipiac poll also asked voters in each state about how they view the three remaining presidential candidates. In more good news for the Sanders camp, the Vermont senator was the only person who is viewed more favorably than unfavorably in all three battleground states. In Pennsylvania, Sanders has his highest score — a 50 percent favorability rating. In Florida and Ohio, 43 percent and 45 percent have a positive view of him, respectively.
Clinton and Trump, on the other hand, are viewed unfavorably by the majority of voters in the three states polled. Clinton’s unfavorable score hits a high of 62 percent in Ohio, while Trump’s top out at 57 percent in Florida and Ohio. In addition, voters seem to have made up their minds about those two candidates. In Ohio, for example, only 2 percent of voters said they haven’t heard enough about Clinton to decide if they viewed her positively or negatively. Trump’s numbers for that question were also in the low single digits.
There’s more wiggle room for Sanders, though. Between 12 and 14 percent of voters in those states said they hadn’t heard enough about Sanders to make an assessment.
When it comes time to write the Democratic platform, it is likely that the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns will have their disagreements. But there is one place where they can find common ground and address a glaring omission in the party’s statement of principles and purposes.
As recently as 2000, the Democratic platform declared support from what should be a basic premise of a party that advocates for voting rights and robust democracy: statehood for the District of Columbia. The platform on which Al Gore ran for the presidency that year declared, “Just as our country has been the chief apostle of democracy in the world, we must lead by example at home. This begins with our nation’s capital. The citizens of the District of Columbia are entitled to autonomy in the conduct of their civic affairs, full political representation as Americans who are fully taxed, and statehood.”
In 2004, however, the word “statehood” was dropped. While the party still advocated for equal rights and representation, it no longer declared that the residents of Washington, DC, should be able to lock in their rights as residents of a state that is equal to every other American state. Despite efforts by DC officials and statehood advocates to get the word restored in 2008 and 2012, the platform has remained vague on the issue.
That should change in 2016.
Clinton wrote a terrific article for The Washington Informer this week, in which she argued that support for DC statehood is critical to “restoring faith in democracy.”
She will get no argument from Sanders. The senator from Vermont is a co-sponsor of the “New Columbia Admission Act,” a bill that would lay groundwork for making Washington, DC, the 51st state.
“Washington, DC, is currently home to more people than the state of Vermont, yet its residents lack voting representation in Congress,” says Sanders. “I think it is morally wrong for American citizens who pay federal taxes, fight in our wars, and live in our country to be denied the basic right to full congressional representation.”
People trying to get medical marijuana legalized in North Dakota are using the Bernie Sanders rally to up the numbers on the petition currently in circulation.
As hundreds of people lined up outside of the Ramada Friday morning ahead of the rally, medical cannabis supporters went down the line, collecting signatures.
"We know that Bernie supports it so we figured Bernie supporters will also support the legalization of medical cannabis in North Dakota,” said Blake Fitzgerald of Fargo. He says they are getting a lot of people to sign.
“Yes, great turnout, everybody is signing it. Everybody that can sign it, that's a north Dakota resident and a registered voter, is signing it so far," Fitzgerald explains.