Hillary Clinton claimed a major a victory in New York on Tuesday night, notching a much-needed win in her home state following eight straight losses to rival Bernie Sanders. With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton led Sanders 58-42 percent.
Clinton managed to stand her ground in New York, the state she represented for eight years in the Senate. She and her husband have lived in Chappaqua, New York, since leaving the White House and the former president set up his foundation offices in Harlem. But it was touch and go for the campaign after a rough month on the trail, with Sanders sweeping from victories in mostly Western states over the last few weeks and gaining on her in New York in some polls. Clinton's last win was nearly a month ago in Arizona on March 22 — the same day Sanders won Utah and Idaho.
Clinton addressed hundreds of supporters in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel Times Square on Tuesday night, thanking her home state for her big victory there.
"Today you proved once again there's no place like home," she said to applause. "New Yorkers you've always had my back. and i've always tried to have yours. It is humbling that you trust me with the awesome responsibilities that await our next president. And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides."
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As Clinton continued to hold leads of anywhere from 6 to 18 points ahead of Tuesday's election, his campaign downplayed their ability to win. "We don't have to win New York on Tuesday," campaign manager Jeff Weaver wrote in an email to supporters over the weekend, "but we have to pick up a lot of delegates."
The Sanders campaign also argued at rallies in New York — some which drew up to 28,000 — that the state's closed elections system would make it a "tough primary" to win. That's because nearly 3 million independent voters, who were not registered with either the Republican or Democratic Parties by the state's early deadline of October, 2015, were unable to vote in Tuesday's election. A large portion of political independents come from the same voting bloc that makes up Sanders's largest base of support: millennials.
Bernie Sanders' campaign on Tuesday called reports of voting irregularities in New York state "a disgrace" as local officials rushed to condemn the city Board of Elections for stripping more than 125,000 Democratic voters from the rolls.
"It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York -- where I was born, actually -- tens of thousands of people as I understand it, have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders said during an evening campaign rally at Penn State University.
In an email to CNN, Sanders spokesman Karthik Ganapathy called the state's handling of the primary a "shameful demonstration."
"From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what's happening today is a disgrace," he said.
Election Justice USA, a voter rights organization, told CNN it will go to Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning as part of an effort to have provisional ballots from voters disenfranchised by the Board of Elections counted before the primary results are certified.
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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Hillary Clinton supporter, called for major reforms to the Board of Elections as a series of snafus continued to bubble up, including reports of the errant "purge" in Brooklyn.
"It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists," de Blasio said in a statement Tuesday calling on the board to "reverse that purge."
"The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed," he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night fueled a raucous crowd at Penn State University, rallying the mostly student gathering into a frenzy of applause, screams and chants.
"It looks like Penn State is ready for a revolution," Sanders said in his opening words after a thunderous reception fitted for a rock star.
Standing at a podium on a stage on the floor of Rec Hall, the venue used for gymnastics and volleyball events, the Vermont Democrat was at the epicenter of his strongest base - millennials.
The overwhelming majority of the crowd was made of college students, many of them wearing Sanders T-shirts, almost all his campaign buttons.
Sanders elicited thunderous applause and cheers from the crowd as he reeled off a list of now familiar campaign talking points, including racial and income inequality, women's rights, a corrupt Wall Street and election campaign financing and health care. He challenged his rival Hillary Clinton to release her transcripts from Wall Street speeches and vowed he would release all of the transcripts of his speeches.
Sanders got the loudest applause for his points about the environment and climate change as well as his promise to provide free public college tuition. Both got the 6,655-strong crowd on his feet and shaking the Sanders placards.
Approximately 2,200 people were “feeling the Bern” at the Bayfront Convention Center, on Tuesday, when U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders brought his campaign to a city recently hit with the hard loss of General Electric manufacturing jobs.
Sanders, who arrived with his wife, Jane, addressed the audience about the recent slash of GE jobs in the area, and the fight to keep working families afloat in the nation.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor, GE has laid of nearly 1,400 local workers this year alone, which in turn will impact as many as 18,000 jobs in the region.
The jobs were moved to Texas, where labor laws allow the company to cut its wages in half. Sanders used GE as an example of a company fueled by “corporate greed,” that took advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
“That is the type of corporate behavior in this country which has got to change,” Sanders said. “When I was elected in 1991, and took office in the United States Congress from Vermont, I understood — it took me about 12 seconds to figure it out — that NAFTA was going to be a disaster for American workers.”
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According to a report from Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2008 and 2013, GE, Verizon and Boeing listed their profits at more than $102 billion, but received $4.1 billion from the Internal Revenue Service in income tax rebates. Sanders, who has been very vocal about his displeasure with this, has brought forth legislation that would repeal tax laws that have cost the U.S. treasury close to $100 billion each year in lost revenue.
“If you want us to buy your products, you’re going to start manufacturing those products here, in the United States of America,” Sanders said.
Bernie Sanders returned home to Vermont late Tuesday, leaving State College, Pennsylvania, before the polls closed in New York.
He was in the air the media called the Democratic presidential primary for Hillary Clinton. A former U.S. senator from New York, Clinton was ahead of Sanders 53.7 to 42.3 percent with 85 percent of votes counted as of 11 p.m. Tuesday. New York has 247 delegates.
"We believe we have the momentum, and we believe we have a path of victory," Sanders told a small group of Vermont reporters a few minutes after he landed at the Burlington airport. Five states vote next week — Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — and Sanders said he is looking forward to winning a number of those states.
He told reporters he had concerns about "voting irregularities" and issues with voter registration in New York.
"I am really concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York state, and I hope that process will change in the future," he said.
Sanders said he has no plans to change campaign strategy after his loss to Clinton, and his message is resonating throughout the country. Grassroots efforts would be the key to winning upcoming states including Pennsylvania, he added.
The union representing the Indiana workers slated to be laid off by Carrier Corp. has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president, the Sanders campaign announced Tuesday.
The Carrier workers found themselves in the national spotlight after a video emerged in February that showed a company executive informing them that their jobs were going to Mexico. Since then, the Carrier story has worked its way into the stump speeches of presidential candidates on both the left and the right, as they have pilloried the company for its plans to offshore 2,100 jobs.
Workers at the plant are represented by the United Steelworkers Local 1999, based in Indianapolis. Kelly Hugunin, a business representative for the union, told The Huffington Post that the union’s executive board first made the recommendation to endorse Sanders. Membership then approved the move at its last monthly meeting. (Their international union, the United Steelworkers, headquartered in Pittsburgh, has not endorsed any candidate yet.)
Hugunin said the union decided to back Sanders because of his consistency in opposing trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which removed trade barriers between the U.S. and Mexico.
“His position on trade has been consistent over the years,” Hugunin said. “He was a pretty staunch opponent to NAFTA, which, in our opinion, has cost us a lot of manufacturing jobs here and across the country.”
Hugunin said the union felt Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, wasn’t as dependable on their primary issue. Her husband, Bill Clinton, signed NAFTA, and the candidate herself hesitated before coming out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the mammoth trade deal that the union opposes, according to Hugunin.
If Hillary Clinton’s campaign thinks it has sewn up the black vote in the city, it has not visited the Gabaron Barber Shop on 116th Street in Harlem.
The men getting their hair trimmed as well as those wielding the razors took turns expressing strong support for Senator Bernie Sanders. Even the sidewalk near the shop has the likeness of Mr. Sanders drawn in chalk, the silhouette of his hair perhaps in need of a trim of its own.
“Bernie supports black people, plain and simple,” said Corey Smith, 30, a hotel worker in the midst of a shave. “I’ve seen the photos of him marching back in the day, and now I’ve seen him all over Harlem.”
Mr. Smith has an 8-year-old son and he said Mr. Sanders’s plan for free college tuition appealed to him. Besides, he added, he couldn’t get past Mrs. Clinton’s support of the 1994 crime bill signed by President Bill Clinton, which set lengthy prison sentences and flooded the streets with police officers.
Manny James came to support Mr. Sanders after growing skeptical of Mrs. Clinton. “Hillary just goes around contradicting herself all the time,” said Mr. James, 26, a hospital janitor. “She’s trying to pander to black people, but it won’t work.”
He caught a glance of himself in the mirror and went on: “Bernie has been with us since Day 1. That man marched on Washington.”
Michael Killatt, 51, a highway maintenance worker wearing a Bernie sticker on his shirt, interrupted to agree.
“Bernie and I, we’re both from Brooklyn,” he said. “He’s the real deal. He’s been talking about helping the homeless and making school more accessible. I like that.”
Supporters of Bernie Sanders are staying positive after Hillary Clinton won by nearly 16 points in the New York primary, further cementing her status as the Democratic party’s frontrunner.
"It's not over," Sanders supporter Maria Bolton-Joubert told Business Insider at a Brooklyn watch party put on by the Sanders campaign. The 34-year-old supporter traveled to New York from Orlando, Florida to canvas for the candidate.
"The momentum is here," she continued. "The mass media is now paying attention."
New York City Council Member Rafael Espinal of Brooklyn found positives in Sanders' performance on Tuesday.
"I think we did what we had to do, and it showed that Bernie Sanders is strong right here in our city," he told supporters following the announcement of Clinton's victory. "We're doing a lot better than Obama did when he ran here in this city" against Clinton in 2008.
"I mean I'm definitely disappointed," said Kayla Santosuosso, a 26-year-old Sanders supporter from Bay Ridge, a neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Santosuosso said she was a part of a group that knocked on hundreds of doors on behalf of Sanders on Tuesday.
Regardless of whether Sanders secures the nomination, Mohammad Khan, a 30-year-old Sanders supporter from Queens, said the senator's campaign has brought Clinton further to the left, an outcome he deemed a major success.
A day after being placed in handcuffs by Washington D.C. police, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, will serve ice cream to supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at the Wilmington Riverfront
Cohen and Greenfield are scheduled to appear at 5 p.m. at the Hare Pavilion at the Wilmington Riverfront, 815 Justison St. The famous Vermonters will serve ice cream as they mingle with Delawarean supporters of Sanders, the campaign said in announcing the event. Sanders himself will be at a similar campaign event in University Park, Pennsylvania Tuesday evening.
Cohen and Greenfield were among approximately 300 people arrested Monday during a demonstration by a group called Democracy Awakening. Although arrested, the two were not jailed, and they will arrive at the Riverfront event as scheduled, a Sanders campaign staffer said.
The ice cream company’s website says the purpose of the protests is to make sure everyone’s voice is heard “and that power in this country is returned to the people.”
Cohen and Greenfield founded their ice cream company in Burlington, Vermont, and have created a flavor, Bernie's Yearning, named after Sanders, who has represented the state in the U.S. Senate since 2006. They've made various campaign appearances for Sanders.
The Delaware primary is April 26.
Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., a “superdelegate” to the Democratic National Convention, said Monday that if there is a contested convention, he will be for Bernie Sanders because he won his congressional district in the Illinois primary.
Every Illinois House member is a superdelegate, a nickname given to the Democratic Party honchos who automatically are delegates to the convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on July 25-28.
Clinton has the edge in elected delegates and an overwhelming lead over Sanders with superdelegates. Sanders and his team have been trying to win superdelegates to their side by arguing they should follow the will of their voters.
In Illinois, Sanders won the 3rd Congressional District, which Lipinski represents, and Lipinski said before the primary he will be guided by the primary outcome of his district.
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“As a Democratic member of Congress, I have a vote at the Democratic National Convention as a superdelegate. Before the Illinois primary I told Democrats in the 3rd District that I decided that I would pledge my vote to whichever candidate won the district,” Lipinski told the Sun-Times in an email.
“When the votes were counted, Sen. Bernie Sanders received 54 percent and Secretary Hillary Clinton received 45 percent in my district. Therefore, if there is a contested vote at the Democratic National Convention in July, I will vote for Sen. Sanders,” Lipinski said.
My brother is an unabashed Bernie Sanders supporter, and so his Facebook page has been full of campaign-related posts for the past few months. If a story brings the bern, it will be shared, full stop. Today, though, my brother stumbled across a video that so took him by surprise that he sent it to me first before he even thought to click "share."
Someone had apparently tracked down Sammy Stephens, the man behind the 10-year-old viral video "Flea Market Montgomery," and had him recreate the goof, this time in support of Sanders. What's that, you say? You’re not one of the nearly 10 million people who’ve seen Mr. Stephens' opus?
In the 2006 video, Stephens raps a passionate plea for people to visit his flea market, which he also swears up and down was just like a mini mall. (I never figured that part out — is there an aversion to flea markets in Alabama?) It earned him enough fame that he not only got a call from viral kingmaker Ellen DeGeneres, but was even invited onto her show. (It was also spoofed by Reno 911! and The Cleveland Show.)
This new video's not meant to make it to Ellen. But it's playing specifically to Sanders supporters, a group that feeds on viral content, and could still get millions of views. (In fact it already made it's way to the People for Bernie Sanders Facebook page, where it's accrued about a half million views.) That's why I was dying to learn why it was made. Was this a weird, shrewd attempt by the Sanders campaign to drum up support ahead of the remaining primaries? Was it created by one of his many organized groups of supporters, or Sammy Stephens himself?
Turns out it was neither. Aaron Brown is the founder of Onion Creek Productions, which bills itself as "one of Austin’s top video production companies specializing in commercials and branded content." Brown tells me that, as a Sanders supporter, he was looking for a way he could help the movement. He planned to use Onion Creek to make a documentary-style video about why Bernie Sanders was a qualified candidate — that is, until he found out that Spike Lee was basically doing the same thing. "You can't compete with Spike," Brown says.
Brown switched gears and decided to try to make a viral video, and the first thing that popped into his head was Sammy Stephens' decade-old internet hit. Brown tracked down a phone number for Stephens and called him up. He says Stephens agreed almost immediately. "He started rapping right on the phone," Brown says with a laugh. Stephens was flown out to Austin and the whole video was shot in about seven hours.