“Fresno,” the Vermont senator said just before 8 p.m., “welcome to the political revolution.”
At Sunday’s event at the Fresno Fairgrounds, the crowd chanted “Bernie” as he walked to the podium at the Paul Paul Theater, which was set up for 5,000 people and was vastly overwhelmed. So many people showed up that the gates had to be closed, leaving a large crowd to listen on loudspeakers outside the theater.
He began his speech, which ran more than an hour, by recounting his campaign’s long odds.
“When we started, people said ‘oh, he’s not going to win any states,’ ” Sanders said. “Well, we’ve won 20.”
He added that he expected to win California – “and we’re going to win it big.”
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“I came to see the person who has encapsulated everything that I’ve always wanted for this country,” said Eva Mendoza of Orange Cove. Mendoza said she gave “no second thought” to driving 45 miles and waiting in the high-90s heat.
“It was one small sacrifice on my part to see someone who can help change the country for the better.”
Olivia Haagenson sat near the stage wearing overalls adorned with political pins that read “Pro child, pro choice,” “Fresno Democrats” and “burn one for Bernie.”
“I finally feel like a politician represents what we (young people) want,” she said. “Hillary and Obama came close, but he really gets it. And that’s pretty tight because he is almost 80, and he still gets it.”
The heat was on Sunday and thousands of people in Visalia “Felt the Bern.”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, brought big promises for the Valley, along with big cheers from the crowd.
He’s the first candidate to stop in Visalia in decades and said part of that is reaching out to rural communities that have been forgotten by lawmakers.
“We have gone to many communities where politicians usually don’t go,” he said. “We do that because I think it’s important for people to get an upfront glimpse of the candidate.”
To the crowd at Groppetti Community Stadium, Sanders started by talking about the drought and water quality. He compared Tulare County to Flint, Mich., where lead-tainted drinking water has been an issue for most of the city’s residents.
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He pointed his finger at Donald Trump Sunday afternoon stating that the presumptive Republican nominee was out of touch with people, from farmers to the entire state of California.
“Donald Trump is the greatest in every aspect of life,” Sanders said sarcastically. “He came to the insightful conclusion that there is no drought. Of course, the people of California know there is a drought, but Donald Trump clearly knows better than the scientists and people of California.”
Sanders called Trump’s theory, “Trump Land.”
Charles Rothbaum has waited a long time for a presidential candidate to visit this traditionally red, Central Valley agricultural town. The last he can remember was Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988.
Rothbaum, 70, was at that Dukakis rally. And 28 years later, almost to the day, he was at Visalia Community Stadium Sunday to see Bernie Sanders. He thinks he knows what took so long.
“Maybe everyone just figures they can count on Republican support here,” Rothbaum said. “There’s a lot of Trump supporters around here. Lots of farmers. They would vote for Trump, but they like Bernie. Everybody recognizes the honesty. That’s what they like about him.”
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Wess Hardin, a local musician who served as Sanders’s warmup act in Visalia, used the exact same word [“stoked”] to describe his own amazement that a presidential candidate would come here.
“It’s so great this is happening in my town right now,” Hardin told the crowd between songs. “I’m so stoked. Just speaks to the kind of guy [Sanders] is.”
Indeed, gratitude for Sanders’s mere presence seemed to permeate the crowd. People here clearly are not used to the attention and did not expect it.
“I think it says a lot about his character, that he really cares about small towns,” said Christina Seitz, a Visalia native who moved back to her hometown a few years ago.
Her husband Danny, 36, completed the thought: “[It shows] that he’s willing to work for all the votes, too — to come to a place where the other candidates aren’t stopping.”
As the political calendar slows this Memorial Day weekend, Bernie Sanders is full steam ahead in California, where he has spent the past two days learning about farmworker conditions in the central valley of California, already incorporating his concerns into his stump speeches at his crowded rallies.
In Bakersfield, Sanders held an intimate community conversation with Latino leaders, where panelists and audience members shared stories of the plights facing farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley.
Lorena Lara, an organizer at Faith in Action in Kern County, asked Sanders, "What will you do to end the deportation machine that has destroyed lives?"
Sanders noted that as a senator he has introduced legislation to end corporate ownership of prisons and detention centers.
"We will also obviously fight for comprehensive immigration reform. With 11 million undocumented people, it is very clear to me that we have a broken immigration system."
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Before the meeting concluded, a professor from California State University in Bakersfield asked Sanders if he would endorse the boycott of produce company Driscoll products, a campaign organized in Washington by Familias Unidas por la Justicia to help undocumented workers who the professor said are being paid $6 a day for their labor.
Though Sanders said he had not heard of the boycott, he expressed outrage at the low wages and added that "Driscoll would hear from me."
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, on a stop Sunday at the original Delano headquarters of the United Farm Workers union, called for renewing efforts to help Central Valley ag laborers, such as improving drinking water quality, raising wages and limiting exposure to harmful pesticides.
The Vermont senator said corporations growing food, as well as those buying it, should be held responsible for the plight of farmworkers. He also expressed support for comprehensive immigration reform, along with a path to citizenship, “as quickly as possible.”
“It’s high time that we pay attention to those who actually grow the food,” he said.
Asked what he would do to address poor water quality in local cases not associated with pesticide contamination, Sanders reiterated his support for a nationwide ban on fracking, the controversial oil well stimulation technique also known as hydraulic fracturing. He additionally called for more work to slow climate change and conserve water during the drought as ways to improve local drinking water.
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Wearing his usual light-blue work shirt and black slacks, the Vermont senator toured UFW property with Federico Chavez, nephew of UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez. Chavez emphasized he was representing only himself, not the labor union. No one attending the event represented the UFW, which has endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sanders’s competitor in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The two men walked the grounds of Agbayani Village, built in part by Federico’s father, Richard Chavez. The property opened in the mid-1970s as a retirement complex for Filipino farmworkers. Agbayani is adjacent to Forty Acres, the UFW’s headquarters in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Federico Chavez, a Berkeley resident who has done work for Sanders’s campaign in Iowa and Nevada, said he was honored to see Sanders acknowledge the UFW’s work and recognize the suffering on farmworkers.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said in an interview aired Sunday that he would not accept help from super-PACs if he were to face presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November.
Sanders was asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” how he would compete with “the billions of dollars on the other side.”
“The Republicans and the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and all these billionaires will pour a whole lot of money into the campaign,” he said. “We have done incredibly well so far in terms of fundraising. By appealing to the middle class and working class of this country, we have gotten almost 8 million individual campaign contributions. Twenty-seven [dollars] on average. That is what I will do in a general election.”
Sanders said he would expect his contributions to increase fivefold in a general election match-up.
“I will win this campaign when you have 8, 10 million people contributing 25, 30 bucks, who are involved in the process,” he said. “Who are prepared to take on the big super-PACs and the billionaires who will fund Trump's campaign.”
When Donald Trump began his campaign by accusing Mexico of sending drug dealers, rapists and other criminals into the United States, the political conversation quickly focused on Latinos. Something similar happened when Trump called for closing U.S. borders to all foreign Muslims.
One minority group that hasn’t received nearly as much attention — negative or otherwise — is Native Americans. But in California, Bernie Sanders is spotlighting indigenous peoples ahead of the Democratic presidential primary here on June 7.
As usual, Trump might have something to do with it. Feuding lately with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the presumptive GOP nominee has been mocking her claim to Native American heritage, which became a major issue during her 2012 campaign against Republican incumbent Scott Brown (now a Trump backer).
Trump has repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas” in stump speeches, though he has not directly disparaged Native Americans, in general. Addressing Native American concerns is one way for Sanders to draw a sharp contrast between himself and the real estate mogul, something he has done throughout his tour of California.
Sanders has another good reason to focus on Native Americans. California is home to more of them — by far — than any other state. According to the 2010 census, 723,225 people claiming Native American heritage — 14 percent of the national total — live in California. One in 50 Californians is at least part Native American.
At a rally in Visalia on Sunday, Sanders revisited injustices from several hundred years ago.
“This campaign is listening to a people whose pain is rarely heard — that is the Native American people,” he said. “All of you know the Native American people were lied to. They were cheated. Treaties they negotiated were broken from before this country even became a country. And we owe the Native American people a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay.”
The battle for the Democratic Presidential nomination between Bernie Sanders – a 74-year old senator with little name recognition (until now) – and Hillary Clinton, who has spent a lifetime amongst Washington’s elite, is heating up. One of their prized ammunition is the social media campaign they’re running (Ex : #feelthebern and #ImWithHer). Bernie’s is more organic, led by his grassroots supporters, which is remarkable and probably necessary given the paucity of attention he has received from the increasingly biased mainstream media.
The question of interest to the social media marketer is this : is the American public rallying behind him because he identifies with the problems faced by the 99%? Absolutely. But how has he managed to capture their imagination in such a short time? These marketing lessons from the veteran politician will make you rethink your social media marketing strategy.
1. Define your audience
Bernie Sanders is an advocate for America’s middle-class and working class. He concerns himself with problems such as income inequality, reduction in taxes for the lower and middle classes, strengthening the manufacturing sector to create more jobs, affordable college education, tuition-free public universities, paid leave, and better veterans’ benefits. A defined audience makes it easier to craft messages that resonate, and encourage positive action. In the way that it makes Sanders appear authentic, it can also make businesses appear caring and trustworthy.
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3. Ensure messaging consistency
Sanders is a big hit with the American youth. His subreddit has over 145,000 subscribers, ‘Bernie is Bae’ messages on t-shirts are selling like hotcakes, and #babesforbernie are popularly used by his young female supporters. Sanders has active social networkers and influencers explaining and promoting his policies to anyone who’s willing to listen. If you ask the young crowd what they find attractive in Bernie, many will point to his consistency and steadfastness in addressing issues of debt and inequality. By avoiding flip-flops and sticking to a core message that aligns with specific needs/pain-points/beliefs, businesses can connect more easily with audiences.
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders are up in arms about the number of polling locations in place for the Puerto Rico primary.
A Sanders supporter, for example, pointed out in a tweet on Sunday that Puerto Rico had 1,510 polling locations in place for the Democratic primary three weeks ago. Now it has just 455.
A "Sanders for President" reddit page also called the reduction "about as bad as Arizona." Dozens of Sanders supporters voiced their displeasure on the page over the cuts.
The commonwealth initially had 1,510 polling locations. But on Friday, it announced instead that there would be 455 for the June 5 primary.
Roberto Prats, president of the Democratic Party on the island, said the 455 locations are four times more than the number of polling locations open in the Republican primary in March, according to Elnuevodia.com.
It was well past lunch on a highway in California near the start of Memorial Day weekend, and the reporters on the Bernie Sanders press van were basically begging their handler for some downtime. Maybe after the next event we could swing by the hotel, they asked the press aide. And to each other they wondered, Doesn’t this 74-year-old ever get tired?
But there is rarely time for a break in the Sanders campaign, as staffers and reporters follow a candidate who doesn’t ever seem to slow down. His opponents might consider the relentless pace a metaphor — why doesn’t he just stop running already? But the Vermont senator is currently barnstorming California, a delegate-rich state he sees as his last hope to slow Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination.On this holiday weekend when Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, had scheduledjust one public event and Hillary Clinton, the most likely Democratic nominee, had nothing public on her schedule, Sanders held one rally after another, interspersed with TV appearances. Ventura, Pomona, and Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday; Long Beach, Inglewood, the Young Turks and Bill Maher on Friday; Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Bakersfield on Saturday; Visalia and Fresno on Sunday; a few stops in Oakland on Monday.
As he points out at each event, this is the kind of primary campaign this state has never seen. Usually the race is decided by the time California votes. But Sanders is hoping that a big win here, while not enough to overcome Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates, will somehow convince unbound superdelegates to throw their support his way. “We are doing something that to the best of my knowledge has never been done in California political history, holding rallies just like this up and down this state,” he says again and again. “By the end of this, I am confident we will have personally met and spoken to over 200,000 Californians. We will win here, and we will go to the Democratic National Convention with the momentum to make our case.”
So as his staff catnapped in the motorcade and the press hoped for at least a coffee stop, the man himself — call him the Energizer Bernie — was completely “on” at one event after the next, giving his one-hour stump speech at what seemed like full volume over and over again.
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So how DOES he do it?
His wife, Jane, described her husband as “just one of those people who is built to keep going.” He has been sick fewer than half a dozen times in their 28-year marriage, she said, and she credits his endurance to the fact that he was a competitive runner in high school.
But mostly, she says, he is fueled by a lifelong feeling that you have to cram as much into a day as possible. “I first met him when he was mayor of Burlington,” she says, and even back then “he was always saying, ‘We have to accomplish this now because we don’t know how long we’ll be here.’ So he’s always pushing for a fuller day” of events. “If there are arguments with staff over the schedule it’s always him saying, ‘What do you mean just one rally?’ He wants to do as many events as possible, go to as many places as possible, saying, ‘We only have a certain amount of time.’”
The visit begins with two previously announced Oakland events Monday: a church appearance followed by a City Hall rally. The time of the rally has been moved up to 5 p.m.
Sanders then will give a news conference Tuesday morning on health care at the Hyatt House in Emeryville, though it will be closed to the public.
Later that day, the Vermont senator will hold a rally in Santa Cruz at the Kaiser Permanente Arena on Front Street. Doors open at 10 a.m. RSVPs for this rally can be made online at bit.ly/1Pa129f.
From there, he will travel to Monterey and hold a rally at Colton Hall Lawn on Pacific Street. The public will be admitted starting at 4:30 p.m. RSVPs can be made online at bit.ly/1U5Ay51.
On Wednesday, Sanders will appear in Palo Alto for a rally at Cubberley Community Center Fields on Middlefield Road. Public admission begins at 11:30 a.m. RSVPs can be made online at bit.ly/1Z7m7Sf.