Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s campaign office in Burlington was found vandalized Saturday, just days before the March 3 primary.
The campaign said a brick was thrown through the window of its downtown office sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning. No one was in the Main Street office at the time, according to a statement from the campaign.
The incident in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ hometown is one of several that have occurred at Bloomberg offices across the country.
R. Christopher Di Mezzo, Vermont state director for Bloomberg and one of a staff of four, arrived at the office late Saturday morning to discover the damage and a brick inside. It is unknown who the perpetrator was. Burlington police were notified, according to the campaign.
In states across the U.S., Bloomberg’s campaign offices have been targeted with similar attacks and the billionaire’s team has been quick to blame Sanders and his supporters.
The Sanders campaign could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday. The campaign has declined to respond to previous accusations by Bloomberg’s campaign on other cases of vandalism reported across the country.
“These repeated attacks against Mike Bloomberg 2020 offices around the country, including in Burlington today, are a clear attempt to intimidate and scare our hardworking team and volunteers from getting out the vote for Mike,” Di Mezzo said in a statement.
After Bloomberg’s Knoxville, Tennessee, office was vandalized on Feb. 20 with the words “oligarch” and “authoritarian” spray painted on the windows, Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s campaign manager, insinuated the Vermont senator was responsible for inciting the incident.
“We don’t know who is responsible for this vandalism, but we do know it echoes language from the Sanders campaign and its supporters,” Sheekey said in a statement at the time.
“We call on Bernie Sanders to immediately condemn these attacks and for his campaign to end the Trump-like rhetoric that is clearly encouraging his supporters to engage in behavior that has no place in our politics,”he added.
Sanders, who in recent weeks has also had offices vandalized, and Bloomberg have sparred in each of the last two debates.
The Vermont senator has accused the billionaire media mogul of attempting to buy the election and Bloomberg has said Sanders is a socialist who cannot win in a general election against President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg, who is self financing his campaign and has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in all Super Tuesday states, has blanketed Vermont with mailers and advertisements for the past month.
In a recent interview, Di Mezzo said winning some of Vermont’s 16 pledged delegates in play on March 3 is a secondary goal for Bloomberg.
“We would like to win a delegate out of Vermont, but really showing that Mike has the time and energy to focus some resources on Vermont is a win in and of itself,” he said.
After the vandalism was discovered Saturday, Di Mezzo said in his statement that Bloomberg would not be intimidated and would continue to try to get votes in Vermont.
“Mike Bloomberg is running for president to unite our country when it is more divided than ever, and we will continue to share his message of taking on tough fights and winning with voters across the state,” he said.
