In the past couple of days, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has now been caught using the logo of two organizations without permission. First, the League of Conservation Voters on the above photo, is especially disingenuous given that the LCV has endorsed Bernie’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Now the AARP logo and slogan is on a campaign mailer.
From AARP:
In response to the Sanders campaign mailing featuring AARP and the Association’s Take A Stand campaign, AARP does not endorse candidates, have a political action committee (PAC), or make contributions to political campaigns or candidates.
While we have encouraged the presidential candidates to lay out their plans to update Social Security, AARP did not authorize the Sanders campaign to mention AARP or use the AARP logo, and we did not participate in its production.
- See more at:
http://states.aarp.org/aarp-statement-in-response-to-sanders-mailing/#sthash.BT8oUW4C.dpuf
News has also now been confirmed that Sanders campaign staffers have been caught wearing Culinary Union buttons to gain access to employee areas in NV casinos.
A statement from the Culinary Union reads as follows:
We can confirm multiple reports of Bernie Sanders’ campaign staffers attempting and gaining access to Employee Dining Rooms at Las Vegas Strip properties where over 57,000 members that we represent work.
We are disappointed and offended. It’s completely inappropriate for any campaign to attempt to mislead Culinary Union members, especially at their place of work. The Culinary Union button that hundreds of thousands of union members have proudly worn to work every day represents 80 years of struggle and fighting for justice. We strongly condemn anyone falsifying their affiliation with the Culinary Union in order to gain access to properties and we will cooperate with casinos and hotels so that this matter is fully resolved.
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The union goes on to note that they have not endorsed anybody ad are trying to gear up for immigration and contract negotiations.
This is not the kind of campaign I thought Bernie would run. As a man, I believe him to be a decent person, but these acts, along withe the data breach, speak rather poorly for his campaign. Be it Jeff Weaver, or Tad Devine someone knew about these actions. These are not random acts. Bernie cannot blame mailers on a PAC, he doesn’t have one; which means someone in his campaign deliberately violated copyright rules to use logos of organizations on campaign mailers. He cannot blame a PAC for staffers falsifying their affiliation to gain access to union workers.
Bernie owes these organizations a direct apology and those who authorized these acts should be fired. And I’m not talking about and underhanded apology, like where he tried to be the victim of the DNC data breach, a real apology.