BREAKING: Three Top Aides For Bernie Sanders Walk Out From His Campaign
In breaking news, three top aides for Senator Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign have stopped working for his 2020 presidential campaign. According to NBC News, Tad Devine, Mark Longabaugh and Julian Mulvey, who all came from a consulting firm that worked with Sanders colleagues in a political consulting firm who all played leading roles in Sanders' 2016 campaign for the White House, are parting ways with the senator, citing creative differences.
Longabaugh told NBC News, "The entire firm has stepped away. We're leaving the campaign. We just didn't have a meeting of the minds."
Devine acted as Sanders' chief strategist in 2016; Longabaugh was primarily responsible for the delegate-hunting roadmap and dealt with the Democratic National Committee vis-à-vis debates, and Mulvey supervised the firm's ads for Sanders, including the effective ad that used Simon & Garfunkel song "America." NBC News added, “All together, the firm produced 275 television, radio and digital ads for that campaign and was involved in much of the campaign's top decision-making.”
The three men issued a joint statement saying, “We are leaving because we believe that Sen. Sanders deserves to have media consultants who share his creative vision for the campaign.”
Sanders’ new campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, stated, "The campaign appreciates all the good work DML has done and wishes them well.”
There were some possible red flags; Devine worked on the 2010 campaign of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych along with Paul Manafort, and the three men’s consulting firm made $5.3 million from the 2016 campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Devine was a senior adviser for both Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and John Kerry’s 2004 campaign; he was the campaign manager for Sen. Lloyd Bentsen when Bentsen ran for vice-president along with presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988. in 2007, Mulvey joined him to form Devine Mulvey; in 2013, Longabaugh joined the firm to form Devine Mulvey Longabaugh.
Sanders has been plagued by various things over the last couple of months; at the beginning of January, a group of his former staffers demanded a meeting with Sanders and his "top political advisers" to discuss rampant "sexual violence" they claimed occurred during the Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. Politico reported that staffers wanted to "discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle."
One wek ago, Sanders blasted prospective presidential candidate Howard Schultz, snapping that he was “blackmailing” the Democratic Party, blasting, "There are a lot of people I know personally who work hard for a living and make 40 or 50,000 dollars a year who know a lot more about politics, than with all due respect does Mr. Schultz. But because we have a corrupt system, anybody who is a billionaire and can throw a lot of TV ads around on television suddenly becomes very, very credible. So, Mr. Schultz, what is he blackmailing the Democratic Party? If you don't nominate Bernie Sanders, he's not going to run? Well, I don't think we should succumb to that kind of blackmail.”
One problem: Sanders has run as an independent candidate for almost four decades. As The Daily Wire pointed out:
He began his foray into elected politics by running as a member of the Liberty Union Party. He ran as a third-party candidate for U.S. senate and the Vermont governorship in 1972. He ran again as a Liberty Union candidate for the U.S. senate in 1974, and again for governor in 1976, according to Roll Call. Sanders ran against the incumbent Democrat mayor of Burlington, VT, and won, serving as mayor for eight years. In 1986, he ran as an Independent candidate for Vermont governor. In 1988, he ran as an Independent for the U.S. House of Representatives. He won in 1990 and served in the House until 2007. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006.
And only yesterday, former staffer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential run ripped Sanders for demanding a private jet when he campaigned for her.
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