Bernie Sanders has accepted an invitation to speak at tomorrow’s National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference (NALEO), billed by its leaders as "the Latino national political convention." Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have declined to attend.
“Explaining why Sanders plans to be at NALEO, his campaign's Latino outreach spokeswoman Erika Andiola said in an emailed statement that Sanders' focus remains on shaping a party platform "that reflects the thousands of Latinos, especially millennials, that voted for Bernie and that decided to participate in this political revolution."
”She (Andiola) said that in his speech Thursday morning he'll discuss the need to pass universal health care, the $15 dollar an hour minimum wage, free college tuition - and other proposals that were part of his campaign platform.”
To be fair, Clinton has a full schedule herself this week but still the decision not to attend was seen as a slight. Arturo Vargas, NALEO's executive director had this to say:
"I think it's a colossal lost opportunity to connect with this constituency...with the NALEO conference serving as the largest gathering of Latino elected and appointed officials in the country and the first national platform to address the greater Latino community following the Orlando massacre, this is a significant missed opportunity for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to provide guidance and support to our nation's Latino leadership at a critical time," Vargas said.
For reasons we can only speculate about Donald Trump did not even respond to the invitation.
Clinton will send as her surrogates Housing Sec. Julian Castro and Sec. of Labor Labor Secretary Tom Perez, both rumored to be in line as her Vice Presidential running mate.
Previous presumptive nominees have attended the conference. In 2008, Barack Obama, then a U.S. senator and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., addressed the group. In 2012, Mitt Romney and Obama did again.