Calling California the "most important primary in the whole nominating process," Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders asked voters to turn out on June 7 and help him secure the state's 475 delegates and use that momentum to clinch his party's nomination.
"When voter turnout is high...we win," he said.
Sanders spoke Thursday at Ventura College, one of several Southern California stops the Vermont senator is making this week as he seeks to upset frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
College officials said 9,856 people turned out to see Sanders, many of them lining up several hours before his midday appearance. But before he got into the meat of the speech, Sanders made an announcement about Republican candidate Donald Trump, who secured the delegates he needed this week.
"It appears that Donald Trump is prepared to debate," Sanders said, to wild approval.
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Sanders' speech also included the need to pass immigration reform.
He had seen firsthand in Florida's tomato fields what happens to some immigrants who are in the country illegally.
"Undocumented workers are being exploited terribly, and they need legal protection," he said. "That is why I believe we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship and provide legal rights to people as soon as possible."
Four-year-old Quinn Ingersoll missed her last day of preschool and its accompanying pageant Thursday.
For good reason, her mother Leah explained, “because this is history.”
Generations lined up for hours together to hear senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speak to a crowd of nearly 10,000 on Ventura College’s West Field.
“It’s good for my kids to see there is someone who will fight for them,” Ingersoll said.
Leah Ingersoll, of Thousand Oaks, posed with daughters Marley, 7, and Quinn — in matching homemade “I Love Bernie” T-shirts — and grandmother Cece of Ventura.
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Eric Lassen, 78, and Tom Moore, 74, a pair of architects from Santa Barbara, played hooky to support Sanders.
“There’s a lot of people here who have taken off work to be here,” Lassen said. “He’s putting out for us, so we wanted to show up for him.”
Moore had a specific message he wanted to share with the crowd.
“I wanted to carry a sign that said ‘Septuagenarians for Sanders,’ ” Moore said.
To chants of “si se puede,” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders courted minority voters Thursday.
Sanders returned to the Inland area Thursday for his third campaign stop in three days.
“This campaign is listening to people whose voices are not often heard. We are listening to the Latino community,” he said before thousands at Ganesha High School in Pomona.
He also referenced gay marriage, a “very ugly” attempt to delegitimize the first African-American president in U.S. history, and immigration issues, calling for an end to current deportation policies. “Let’s unite families, not divide families,” he said.
Genesha is the same venue at which Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, spoke Saturday on her behalf. While the 42nd president campaigned on the school’s central quad, Sanders took to the school’s football stadium.
Claremont McKenna College professor John J. Pitney Jr. said Pomona offers strategic advantages for reaching the Latino vote. Clinton’s nine-point lead among likely Hispanic voters is “surprisingly modest,” he said.
“The Hispanic vote is in play, and Pomona is overwhelmingly Hispanic,” Pitney said in an email. “Moreover, a candidate visit is likely to make more of an impression there than in Los Angeles. Major political figures visit L.A. all the time, but a visit to Pomona is something special.”
Bernie Sanders wanted to offer a quick history lesson about Donald Trump to supporters here Thursday evening, so he asked them to think back a few years.
“Not so many years ago, before he was a candidate, he was involved in a so-called birther movement,” Sanders said about Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “The birther movement was delegitmizing President Obama by claiming that he was not born in the United States.”
Indeed, Trump was among a vocal group of Republicans who early on in Obama’s first term questioned whether he was born in the United States. (Trump, in his quest for the GOP nomination, also questioned the citizenship of rival Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.)
Eventually, in 2011, Obama made his birth certificate public to quiet his detractors. But as early as last year, Trump was still expressing unease about Obama’s citizenship
“That was very ugly effort to delegitimize the presidency of the first African American president in our history -- not acceptable,” Sanders said to applause from supporters huddled on the football field of Ganesha High School, the same place where former President Bill Clinton campaigned last weekend on behalf of his wife, Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
Sanders did not mention Hillary Clinton, who is outpacing him in delegates, but instead focused on Trump.
Bernie Sanders gave Jimmy Kimmel credit for opening a channel of communication between him and Donald Trump.
"You made it possible for us to have a very interesting debate. About two guys who look at the world very, very differently," Sanders said on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on Thursday night. And he was referring to the possibility of a Trump-Sanders debate.
That conversation came about because of Kimmel. On Wednesday's show, he had asked Trump whether he'd debate Sanders, given that Hillary Clinton had turned Sanders down for a California debate. Trump declared he would -- as long as the proceeds went to charity.
Clinton was asked about her reaction to the debate, which she dismissed as a joke.
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Having asked Trump a question from Sanders the night before, Kimmel turned to Sanders Thursday night to ask him a question Trump wanted to ask.
"Bernie, you have been treated very unfairly," Kimmel read. "Both primary systems are rigged, but in particular the Democrats' ridiculous system of superdelegates. Will you run as an independent when Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the party bosses steal this nomination away from you?"
Sanders didn't commit.
"I think there is a little bit of self-service there from Donald Trump," Sanders said to Kimmel. He joked that the question must come straight from the heart and said he hopes to run against Trump as the Democratic nominee.
The Sanders campaign -- which has been looking to debate Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton before California's primary on June 7 -- continued to push the idea on Thursday, with Sanders himself broaching the topic at the top of remarks at a Revolt TV town hall on Thursday morning in Hollywood.
"Now I understand that yesterday on the Jimmy Kimmel show, which I'm going to be recording later today, Donald Trump has agreed to debate me. I look forward to that," he told an audience during the live-streamed event.
Later in the day, Sanders' campaign manager said he hopes Trump doesn't "chicken out" after the two talked about the possibility of a one-on-one debate, but the presumptive GOP front-runner said he'd "love to debate Bernie."
"We are ready to debate Donald Trump. We hope he will not chicken out. I think it will be great for America to see these two candidates and the different visions they have for America going forward," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "What we'll have to see, Wolf, is does Donald Trump have the courage to get on the stage with Bernie Sanders. That remains to be seen."
Trump made it clear Thursday that he wants to follow through with the debate.
"I'd love to debate Bernie. He's a dream," the real estate magnate said in Bismarck, North Dakota. "If we can raise for maybe women's health issues or something. If we can raise $10 or $15 million for charity, which would be a very appropriate amount."
Far away from the halls of Congress, as he continues to rankle Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders is fashioning a new role for himself in the Senate: The next Dr. No.
The Vermont senator, remade as one of the best-known members of Congress, is throwing his weight against some of the most significant bipartisan deals pending in Congress this year. He’s actively urging Senate Democrats to reject a deal reached by House Republicans and the Obama administration to ease Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and has emerged as one of the few opponents of a landmark overhaul of chemical safety laws — the first major environmental legislation in a generation.
Sanders’ stands against those measures are the first signs of how he intends to leverage his newfound notoriety to become a force for the left in Congress once his presidential run ends. Asked how influential Sanders would be on these and other issues once he returns to the Senate, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) responded: “Very.”
“He’s grown a movement, and he is the leader of it, although there are others,” Schatz added. “I think his voice is louder and stronger than ever.”
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Sanders has long been an iconoclastic voice of the left in the Senate, but his positions have generally drawn little notice. Before he launched his campaign last year, the most recent time he had commanded serious national attention was when he waged an eight-hour speech railing against renewal of the Bush tax cuts in 2010 — a maneuver that dazzled liberals.
But, at whatever point he comes back to the Senate, Sanders is poised to be more powerful than ever, backed by more than 2 million Twitter followers and millions more admirers nationwide who’ll be looking to him to help set the progressive agenda.
That means Sanders’ active opposition to the Puerto Rico deal could be the first test of his post-campaign influence in the Senate. He circulated a letter earlier this week urging fellow Democrats to kill the deal and find a solution that doesn’t, in his view, shortchange residents of the beleaguered island territory.
In a wide-ranging interview with TIME for this week’s cover story, Bernie Sanders opened up about his frustrations with Hillary Clinton and laid out a new vision for the Democratic Party.
Speaking on the rooftop of a hotel in San Diego two-and-a-half weeks left before the Democratic primary in California, the Vermont Senator said he still believes he has a slim chance to win the Democratic nomination despite lagging in delegates. He blamed the party’s arcane primary rules for shutting out Independents and hurting his chance at winning the nomination. And he said he wants to completely reform the party even if it means a contentious fight with the Clinton campaign at the Democratic Party’s convention in July.
“To me, a victory is becoming president of the United States, and taking the oath of office in January,” Sanders said. “That’s what a victory is. And right now, whether I win or lose, what I want to see is a transformation of the Democratic Party into a grassroots movement.”
Sanders laid out a series of reforms he wants to see the Democratic Party carry out, including opening primaries to independent voters and reconsidering the role of superdelegates, as well as policy provisions such as Medicare-for-all, free public college and a $15 minimum wage.
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Those people that you’re talking about, do you feel that you have some kind of obligation to them? These people who believe your message and want to see change in the party.
I think you’re asking the wrong question, as I often feel the media is. Do I feel I have a personal obligation to them? Of course. I’ve spent my whole life working for those people. The question is, does the Democratic Party have the obligation to open its doors to those people, to hear what those people have to say, rather than worry about getting money from Wall Street and drug companies and the powerful special interests. Do you follow what I’m saying?
And then when you do that, not only is your public policy the right policy in terms of taking on the fossil fuel industry so we can save this planet from climate change, not only will we be able to lower prescription drug costs, and not only will we be able to end the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street, but it’s good politics, too. So what I’m asking of the Democratic Party is good public policy, which translates into good politics, open the doors, stop worrying about your billionaires and Wall Street supporting you, create a vital dynamic political party which represents working families and the young people of this country.
If you voted in last weeks’ Kentucky Democratic presidential primary, your vote was likely recorded correctly. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still the unofficial winner.
After a recanvass requested by fellow candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, this is what changed: Sanders lost three votes and Clinton lost 16.
Kentucky Secretary of State Allison Lundergan Grimes says the discrepancies were already reported before Thursday's recanvass. Basically, no change came from the recanvass.
McCracken County Clerk Julie Griggs says no error was made here, and the recanvass proves it’s accurate. “We check and check, and double check on election night, so I felt for sure this was going to be the results of today’s recanvass,” Griggs told me.
The recanvass took Sanders from 210,626 votes to three less. Murray State University political science professor James Clinger says he believes the recanvass may not have been a total loss for Sanders.
Clinger says he believes it helped get Sanders' name on headlines and showed the campaign is still alive and well. “There's something more than the one delegate that could possibly be changed that's behind his thinking,” Clinger said.
Arun Chaudhary has often worked in the shadows. The New York University-trained filmmaker was the first official White House videographer in history under President Barack Obama. Now, along with a team of four filmmakers, who are also rotating as still photographers, he has taken on the roles of creative director and official photographer on Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
Alice Gabriner: What’s your approach when photographing Bernie Sanders?
Arun Chaudhary: This is 2016 and this is the selfie election. As many photos as I take of Bernie Sanders, millennials in the rope line are taking thousands more. And everywhere you go, there are so many photographs. The iPhone 6 is a remarkable piece of technology. The photographs are great. I think it has really empowered ordinary folks to take pictures that they think look professional. And I’m not disputing that. They are in focus, they are nicely color saturated, they are sort of generally flat, like you can really see what’s going on. But against that backdrop, we need to make photos that are telling a different story than that.
While we’re shooting, we shoot directly into lights to get lens flare, we don’t mind having digital noise if it’s dark. We even put things out that are a little out of focus from time to time. And I think all of this helps differentiate what our work is.
Alice Gabriner: Are you saying that’s intentional? Or is it just that you want it to look raw and a little bit amateur?
Arun Chaudhary: It’s very intentional. Gritty is the new glossy. I don’t know that I want to say amateur, I just want to say non-slick. And the technical reason is that it makes it pop more against all that other stuff.
We’re living in an age of increasing distrust of authority. And I think when you see political media that is slick, that is perfect, that feels anonymous, and you don’t know what the point of view is or where it’s coming from, it can be very off-putting for people.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is giving a boost to Russ Feingold in his bid to return to the Senate. The Democratic presidential candidate sent out an email to his national list of supporters Thursday to raise money for the progressive Democrat.
“We are going to have to elect candidates up and down the ballot who recognize that it is too late for establishment politics and economics,” Sanders wrote. “Candidates like my friend, former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.”
“Russ led the fight with me to make the Affordable Care Act much stronger in 2009. He voted against the USA Patriot Act and the war in Iraq,” he added. “He authored and passed landmark campaign finance reform legislation and his campaign is powered by small-dollar contributions like ours.”
Feingold is running to retake his seat from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who was swept into office in the tea party wave of 2010. He’s considered one of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents in this election cycle, and HuffPost Pollster’s average of polling in the race shows Feingold with a slight lead.
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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) advised Democrats eager to see Sanders drop out of the presidential race to “lay off” Tuesday, specifically noting his support of Feingold.
“I’m very happy that Sen. Sanders is supporting him big time,” Reid said.