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Tag: 2016 democratic candidate
Wealthy Republicans Campaign For Hillary Clinton, Reject Trump

Wealthy Republicans Campaign For Hillary Clinton, Reject Trump

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Groups of wealthy Republicans unhappy with Donald Trump have been privately courting prominent peers to join them in backing Democrat Hillary Clinton’s U.S. presidential bid, several people involved in the effort told Reuters.

They say they are seeking money and endorsements from other Republicans disillusioned by Trump, their party’s candidate for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Some have received encouragement from Clinton and members of her campaign staff.

“I made the decision that I wouldn’t be able to look at my grandkids if I voted for Trump,” said Dan Webb, a former federal prosecutor and a self-described “Republican for decades” working to win over prominent Republican business people in Chicago.

Trump, a New York developer making his first run at public office, has made traditional Republican donors uneasy with inflammatory statements about women, Mexicans, Muslims and war veterans, among others.

Big-name Wall Street donors can make a difference for Clinton. They could inject big money into a campaign. They might influence moderate Republicans to switch sides. Their support of Clinton challenges Trump’s assertion that his business successes make him a better candidate for president.

With the political conventions barely over, the Republican effort to fundraise for Clinton is at an early stage. Some of the groups have yet to receive contributions because they must still file paperwork under campaign finance rules.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined comment for this story. Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said business leaders are supporting Clinton because of her economic plan and because Trump “cannot be trusted.”

WARY OF TRUMP

Groups formed to support Clinton include Republicans for Her 2016, run by Republican lobbyist Craig Snyder; a grassroots organization called R4C16, led by John Stubbs and Ricardo Reyes, officials in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and the Republican Women for Hillary group co-led by Jennifer Pierotti Lim, an official at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The first two groups are acting independently of Clinton’s own effort. The third is acting in concert with her campaign.

“We wanted to go out there and be the voice for Republicans who were feeling wary about Trump and weird about publicly endorsing Hillary,” said Pierotti Lim, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention at the Clinton team’s invitation.

Webb, a partner at law firm Winston & Strawn, said he began his outreach after being approached by billionaire investor J.B. Pritzker and longtime Clinton associate Lanny Davis. Pritzker and Davis could not be reached for comment.

On Wednesday, billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman said he would work to get Clinton elected because of comments by Trump he found “shockingly unacceptable.” Although Klarman, who is the president and chief executive of The Baupost Group, is a registered independent, a review of filings shows his political giving has largely benefited Republicans over the years, including some of Trump’s rivals in the state-by-state nominating contests this year.

(Read the story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-klarman-idUSKCN10E2TR)

WHITMAN, BLOOMBERG BACK CLINTON

Spearheading in part the Clinton effort to woo Republicans on Wall Street is Democratic strategist Leslie Dach, a former Walmart executive and aide to Bill Clinton, sources close to the Clinton campaign said.

People familiar with the Clinton drive say the Democratic nominee herself has spoken to Republican business leaders, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chief Executive Meg Whitman, who endorsed Clinton on Tuesday.

Clinton deputies courted former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ahead of a rousing speech he gave at last month’s Democratic National Convention that urged Wall Street to support her.

Whether Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire media mogul and an erstwhile Republican, will play a role in courting other Republican business leaders has yet to be determined, a source close to the discussions said.

While some major donors are hesitant to back Trump, the candidate over the last month has pulled in millions of dollars in small-money donations to boost total contributions to more than $80 million for Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party, nearly matching Clinton’s $90 million haul during the same period.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan, Lawrence Delevingne and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston; Writing by Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Howard Goller)

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton makes a speech during a campaign stop in Lynwood, California, United States June 6, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake.

Sanders Says Will Vote For Hillary Clinton For President

Sanders Says Will Vote For Hillary Clinton For President

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said on Friday he will vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, mainly as a way to stop Republican Donald Trump from winning the White House.

The move comes after weeks of pressure on Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, from Democratic party officials to endorse Clinton since she locked up the nomination this month with a string of wins in state-by-state primary contests.

Asked if he would vote for Clinton in November, Sanders told MSNBC television: “Yes. The issue right here is I’m going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump. I think Trump in so many ways would be a disaster for this country if he were elected president.”

“We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, who is insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, who does not believe in the reality of climate change,” he continued.

Trump has angered minority groups with his hard line on immigration, including calls to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border if he is elected.

Trump has also called climate change a hoax by the Chinese to hurt business in the United States.

Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, managed to turn his long-shot run into a mass movement with proposals to combat wealth inequality, increase access to health care and education, and defend the environment.

His challenge to Clinton, one of the best known figures in U.S. politics, lasted far longer than expected, running for four months and across 50 states and yielding record numbers of small donations to his campaign.

Sanders has said he will continue to push for a liberal agenda heading into the Democratic National Convention July 25-28, when Clinton’s nomination is expected to become official. He has also made clear he doesn’t want his presence to hurt the party’s chances of keeping the White House.

More than three-quarters of Democrats say Sanders should have a “major role” in shaping the party’s positions, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month. Nearly two-thirds also said that Sanders should endorse Clinton.

 

(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis in Boston; Editing by Alden Bentley and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addresses the audience at the theater of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 16, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

Bernie Sanders Rally Draws 27,000 To The Heart Of Manhattan

Bernie Sanders Rally Draws 27,000 To The Heart Of Manhattan

Campaigning in New York City less than a week before the New York primaries, Bernie Sanders held a massive rally in Washington Square Park yesterday evening. A reported 27,000 people filled the park to hear Sanders’s message of economic and political inclusion.

“When I look out at an unbelievable crowd like this, I believe we’re going to win here in New York next Tuesday,” he told the crowd. “I don’t think that there is any doubt today that our campaign has the momentum.”

The rally was the culmination of Sanders’s campaigning around the state thus far. He touched on the central themes of his campaign and recalled moments in history when decisive political mobilization yielded tangible results:

“This campaign remembers that over the last hundreds of years, African Americans and their allies stood up, fought back and said, ‘America will not be built on segregation, racism and bigotry.’ And millions of Americans stood together and made monumental change in this country. And this campaign remembers, that 100 years ago, not a long time ago, women in America did not have the right to vote, could not get the education they wanted or the jobs they wanted. But women and their male allies stood up. They fought back. And they said, ‘women in America will be second class citizens.’ And this campaign remembers, interestingly enough, something that happened two or three blocks away from here, and that is that 47 years ago, the gay community said that in this country, right over here in the Stone Wall Inn, that in this country, people will have the right to love each other no matter what their gender is. And this campaign understands the change that is taking place right now, this moment, in American society.”

During the rally, the crowd repeatedly broke into impromptu chants of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!”

“Despite what others may tell you, yes we can change the status quo, and that is what is happening all across this country today and that is what the political revolution is about,” he said.

Sanders also called out Verizon, whose employees he joined on the picket line yesterday to protest the company’s poor labor record. “Verizon is just a poster child for what so many of our corporations are doing today,” he told the crowd. “This campaign is sending a message to corporate America: you cannot have it all.”

The Vermont senator has been busy since the end of March, when presidential candidates set their sights on New York state. For both Democrats, the stakes are very high. The state has 247 delegates at stake, second only to California, and a victory here for either candidate is likely to cement the future of their campaigns. New Yorkers will go to the polls next Tuesday in the state’s closed primaries.

Photo: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders reacts to the primary election results in the states of Florida, Ohio and Illinois during a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Nancy Wiechec

Clinton and Sanders Both Break With Obama On Mass Deportations

Clinton and Sanders Both Break With Obama On Mass Deportations

During last night’s Democratic debate, both candidates broke with President Barack Obama’s policy of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country and promised to not deport any undocumented children or adults without criminal records. The pledge to break with Obama-era policy on undocumented immigrants reflects popular and Congressional outrage over the raids.

“Of the people, the undocumented people living in our country, I do not want to see them deported. I want to see them on a path to citizenship. That is exactly what I will do,” Clinton said.

Sanders in turn pointed to Clinton’s statements in 2014, regarding a recent influx of refugees from Central America at the Texas-Mexico border. “They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are,” Clinton said at the time, “because there are concerns about whether all of them should be sent back.”

“Secretary Clinton did not support those children coming into this country. I did,” said Sanders. “Now, I happen to agree with President Obama on many, many issues. I think he has done a great job as president of the United States. He is wrong on this issue of deportation. I disagree with him on that.”

It was another moment of criticism from Sanders, who has been accused of being far too critical of Obama’s policies.

“I have been consistent and committed to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship,” responded Clinton, referring to Ted Kennedy’s efforts to achieve immigration reform in 2007. “We had Republican support, we had a president willing to sign it. I voted for that bill. Sen. Sanders voted against it. Just think — imagine where we would be today if we had achieved comprehensive immigration reform nine years ago.”

Sanders says he opposed the bill because of the conditions it allowed that he called “akin to slavery.” At the time, Sanders also argued that increased numbers of guest workers would depress wages for Americans. “It is not about raising wages or improving benefits,” he said. “What it is about is bringing into this country over a period of years millions of low-wage temporary workers with the result that wages and benefits in this country, which are already going down, will go down even further.”

The AFL-CIO sided with Sanders over the same concerns about low wage workers. “Sanders was basically one of our only allies … especially for low-skilled workers,” said Ana Avendano, a former top immigration official at the AFL-CIO, to Politico. “He adamantly put his foot down and said these kinds of programs [allow] employers to bring in more and more vulnerable workers.”

While Republicans continue to outmaneuver each other on who can kick out the most undocumented immigrants, build the highest wall with Mexico, or cast doubt on the constitutionality of citizenship laws, Democrats have taken a more pragmatic position on one of the most pressing issues of this election cycle. According to Pew Research Center, some 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States today. In both Democratic candidates, the millions of immigrants seeking a path to citizenship may have an ally in the White House come January.