[A]s Sen. Bernie Sanders moves closer to a decision on whether he will again run for president, he met with a group of former staffers who said they had faced sexual harassment and discrimination from high-ranking colleagues during his 2016 campaign.
The Vermont independent and his top advisers went to a hotel near Capitol Hill to listen to 20 former campaign workers describe instances of sexual misconduct and bias and to discuss ways to ensure there is no sex discrimination in a 2020 campaign, the New York Times reported.
The meeting was called in a response to a letter sent by more than two dozen people who worked on Sanders’ 2016 campaign. In it, they asked to meet with the senator to discuss how to mitigate a culture of sexism in campaigns. The meeting was arranged nearly a month after the letter was sent to Sanders’ office.
The only outward acknowledgement of the gathering from the Sanders team came by way of a tweet Wednesday evening from a Sanders spokesperson, Josh Miller-Lewis, who pointed out that the senator had missed a floor vote to attend a meeting.
Sanders was the only senator to miss the vote on a resolution to block the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia. The move fell three votes short, so the absence of the Vermont senator — who opposed the lifting of sanctions — did not matter in the end.
Bernie voted in favor of Russia sanctions yesterday. He missed today’s vote because he had a meeting he had to attend. He would have voted yes. https://t.co/0VINPZXMRJ
— Josh Miller-Lewis (@jmillerlewis) January 17, 2019
Participants at the hotel meeting included a number of Sanders’ inner circle. Among them: Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager and senior adviser; Ari Rabin-Havt, Sanders’ deputy chief of staff; Shannon Jackson, adviser and campaign manager of the senator’s 2018 re-election campaign; Arianna Jones, spokesperson for Friends of Bernie Sanders; and Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife.
After the meeting, Sanders did not make himself available to the media, and other members with knowledge of topics discussed did not divulge information to the press.
Last week Sanders issued an apology to the women who worked on his previous presidential campaign.
“To the women on my 2016 campaign who were harassed or mistreated, thank you, from the bottom of my heart for speaking out. I apologize,” Sanders said. “We can’t just talk about ending sexism and discrimination. It must be a reality in our daily lives. That was clearly not the case in 2016.”
This spotlight on the 2016 campaign has not left Sanders’ inner circle unscathed.
CNN reported last week that Weaver would not return to the role he held in 2016 should Sanders decided to run again, and Friends of Bernie Sanders confirmed to VTDigger that Weaver would not be the campaign manager in a possible 2020 run.
Sanders is expected to make a decision soon on whether he will mount a presidential campaign and his team has started to make subtle moves in anticipation of the announcement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and Julián Castro, a former member of President Obama’s cabinet, have already said they are running in 2020.
On Monday, Politico reported that Sanders’ campaign team is in talks with the media production company that helped make Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a political celebrity with a campaign video that went viral online.
It's time for a New York that works for all of us.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 30, 2018
On June 26th, we can make it happen – but only if we have the #CourageToChange.
It's time to get to work. Please retweet this video and sign up to knock doors + more at https://t.co/kacKFI9RtI to bring our movement to Congress. pic.twitter.com/aqKMjovEjZ
Tim Tagaris and Robin Curran, Sanders’ digital fundraising director and digital production director from 2016, have also agreed to join a presidential campaign for 2020, according to Politico. Those moves are seen as an indication that Sanders and his team believe 2020 is likely to be won or lost on the internet.
But some former Sanders 2016 staffers are not re-upping with the Vermont senator and have gone to work for the former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, another 2020 hopeful, and Warren, according to the New York Times.
Support for Sanders among grassroots organizations is still very strong, however, and on Saturday 400 events urging Sanders to run for president took place across the country.
The People for Bernie Sanders and Organizing for Bernie, political action groups unaffiliated with a possible Sanders campaign, said the events prove there is already “an army of community led organizers already ramped up to put him miles ahead of other candidates in the 2020 race.”
In a statement, Winnie Wong, co-founder of the People for Bernie, said Sanders should know that people appreciate the work he has done on income inequality and that “when the 2016 election was over, he continued to fight for us, and now we will keep fighting for him.”
“Last month, Sen. Sanders said grassroots support would determine whether or not he decides to run for president again,” Wong said. “We are here, and we are ready to support him all the way to finish line.”
