Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign 2020

Template:TOCnestleft Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign 2020

Communications director

• Mike Casca, Sanders' communications director.

Field director

The Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign has tapped a Lancaster woman to be its national field director.

Becca Rast, 29, has been named to the campaign’s leadership team as it prepares for its official launch later this month.

Iowa hires

The Sanders campaign announced the following hires March 2019:

• Misty Rebik, state director. Rebik was campaign manager for Cathy Glasson's primary run for Iowa governor. She previously worked for One Iowa and served as co-founder and founding director of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa.
• Jess Mazour, political director. Mazour was previously lead organizer on the farm and environment team at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.
• Evan Burger, state caucus director. Burger was a senior organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and previously worked as the Iowa advance director for Sanders' 2016 campaign.
• Pete D'Alessandro, senior advisor. D'Alessandro directed Sanders' 2016 Iowa campaign and went on to work as the Oklahoma state director, Indiana state director, northern California director and the National Convention delegate director.

December 2019 Bernie Sanders has won the endorsement of People's Action, a coalition of 40 progressive groups that said it represents more than 1 million members in key early-voting states and others across the country.

The nod is a triumph for the Vermont senator in the competition with Elizabeth Warren to become the leading left-wing candidate in the presidential primary.

“We were really struck by the fact that for the last few decades, this guy has been able to see through the haze of a neoliberal worldview that has affected so many parts of American life,” said George Goehl, national director of People's Action. “We also think he’s uniquely positioned to win. He’s already stitched together a multiracial, urban, rural, multigenerational campaign.”

Sanders received nearly 74 percent of the ballots cast by delegates from the group’s affiliates, according to People's Action. Goehl said there was a period in the primary when it seemed the vote “might be closer.” Sanders' rollout of his housing plan, which calls for building almost 10 million affordable housing units as well as national rent control, was a turning point, Goehl said.

The nod from People's Action is the latest in a string of progressive endorsements nabbed by Sanders in recent months. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) backed him in October, giving a jolt of excitement to his campaign after he had been eclipsed in the national polls by Warren and suffered a heart attack.

Sanders has since leapfrogged Warren and is now in second place behind Joe Biden,. He also recently bested her in scoring an endorsement from the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-wing group that counts 600,000 members.

Analilia Mejia, Sanders’ national political director, said the backing of the two coalitions sends a message by progressives.

"Combined, it’s over 1.5 million members,” she said. “It gives you a sense of the popularity of our candidate, especially with those who are doing the work.”

The Sanders team worked for months to court People's Action: Sanders met and spoke with the group’s affiliates, and his team convened conference calls with them while putting out policy proposals. Omar and Tlaib also contacted the organization’s leaders in their home states to vouch for the presidential candidate, according to a Sanders aide.

Omar said an event hosted by one of the group’s affiliates helped persuade her to endorse Sanders: “It was at the Iowa People's Action presidential forum in September where I saw the power of their grassroots movement. And it was clear then that Bernie was the candidate to take on Trump and take back the White House."

People’s Action has a presence in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Super Tuesday states, including in rural areas. In addition to Sanders and Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro and Kamala Harris also responded to the group’s questionnaire.

“People's Action is one of the great grassroots organizations in this country,” said Sanders in a video that will be released after the endorsement is announced. “I am just so proud and excited to have the endorsement of People’s Action because they understand what I understand: That at the end of the day, the only way we make real change in this country is through grassroots activism.”

ISNA convention

Addressing the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in August 2019 in Houston, Julian Castro and Bernie Sanders pledged to overturn Trump's travel ban, which targets several Muslim-majority countries, and vowed to create a vastly more welcoming environment for Muslims in the United States.

"It begins at home by saying that you are full partners in American progress," Castro told thousands of attendees inside the George R. Brown Convention Center.

Sanders, the independent U.S. senator, got a particularly enthusiastic response inside the convention hall as he gave a speech that hit on his usual campaign themes while zeroing in on issues specifically affecting the Muslim world, including in foreign policy. He was introduced by his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, who is Muslim.

"We must speak out when we have a president and an administration who believe — and I quote — that 'Islam hates us,'" Sanders said, referring to a comment Trump made while campaigning for president in 2016. "We must speak out at hate crimes and violence targeted at the Muslim community and call it what it is: domestic terrorism."

At the same time, Sanders pointed to causes for optimism: the non-Muslims who joined in airport protests against the travel ban and the Muslim who have been elected to Congress under Trump. "What that tells me is that the American people understand our country is at our best when we stand together regardless of our religious or spiritual beliefs," Sanders said.

On foreign policy, Sanders touted his 2002 opposition to the the Iraq War, which, he noted, created instability in the region and gave rise to the Islamic State terrorist group whose victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. Sanders also broached a topic that has not gotten wide discussion in the 2020 field, criticizing India for recently revoking the autonomy of Kashmir, a disputed region with Pakistan.

"India's action is unacceptable," Sanders said. "The communications blockade must be lifted immediately, and the United States government must speak out boldly in support of international humanitarian law and in support of a U.N.-backed peaceful resolution that respects the will of the Kashmiri people."

Both Castro and Sanders made other stops in Houston prior to the ISNA convention.

Sanders headlined a low-dollar campaign fundraiser at an Indian-Pakistani restaurant where he was introduced by Abdul El-Sayed, a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate. Sanders spoke about creating a movement bigger than any one election but also expressed confidence about his chances in Texas, saying he was asking for support "to help me win the Democratic primary here — and I think we can do it."

Bernie co-chair

Cullen Tiernan February 21 2019:

Holy duck 🦆 it’s going to be Nina Turner, Puerto Rico’s Carmen Yulin Cruz and Rep. Ro Khanna on the Bernie dream team. — with Ro Khanna.

People's Action

San Francisco Rising Alliance April 30 2019·

Proud to share the stage at the #PeoplesWave with Senator Bernie Sanders, pushing for #MedicareforAll and #FreeCollegeforAll!! People's Action — with Emily Ja-ming Lee, Celi Tamayo-Lee and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

Building DSA with Bernie

DECEMBER 11, 2019 by Alec Ramsay-Smith

Bernie Sanders is the first viable national candidate in living memory who identifies as a democratic socialist, and his campaign has already mobilized masses of working people. By endorsing Sanders, DSA committed to playing a key role on the national stage. Rather than limit ourselves to funneling volunteers to Sanders field offices, we launched an Independent Expenditure (IE) campaign to go toe-to-toe with the right wing and corporate Democrats. The IE gives DSA the ability to set its own strategy and dedicate its full resources to the cause as long as it does not coordinate with the campaign.

DSA may lack the resources to buy equal airtime with millionaires and billionaires, but we have a nationwide network of more than 55,000 committed socialists. Chapters have already started tabling and canvassing door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods to contact potential voters (see story on p. 4), and many have sponsored debate-watch parties and other events to grow their core of activists. The goal of each conversation is to engage people on their issues, ask them to pledge to support Bernie in the primary, and bring them into DSA. The campaign has kicked off monthly Weeks of Action to generate excitement and lift up the campaign’s socialist demands. We must also seize this moment to organize and expand our movement. To grow DSA’s power as a membership-driven organization, chapters will need to identify and recruit leaders into the work, develop their members’ strategic campaign skills, and sign up Bernie’s multiracial and working-class base as DSA members. Current at-large members can host Bernie house parties and use them to assemble organizing committees and form new chapters. If we do it right, DSA will end this campaign larger and stronger than ever before.

DSA is going to win this campaign, not because we have the best ideas, but because we out-organize everyone else. And with a class-struggle candidate in Bernie Sanders, we are ready to build toward becoming the mass movement we need.

References

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