Sanders easily won nominating contests in Alaska, Washington and Hawaii on Saturday. (File Photo: AP)
Reuters, Washington
Monday, 28 March 2016
Fresh from Democratic presidential primary wins over the weekend in
three US states, Bernie Sanders said on Sunday he had political
momentum that could help him win the backing of Democratic power brokers
in his race against Hillary Clinton.
Sanders
easily won nominating contests in Alaska, Washington and Hawaii on
Saturday. His latest remarks reflect his plan to chip away at Clinton’s
commanding lead in the number of delegates needed to win the party’s
nomination for the November election.
Interviewed
on Sunday by US broadcasters, Sanders said Democratic
“super-delegates,” who can change their allegiance, might face pressure
to rally behind him because most polls suggest he has a better chance
than Clinton of beating a Republican candidate.
“Momentum
is with us,” Sanders, a senator from Vermont, said on CNN’S State of
the Union news program. “A lot of these super-delegates may rethink
their position with Hillary Clinton.”
Sanders
also criticized Clinton’s reliance on wealthy donors to fund her
campaign. He cited a fundraising dinner being hosted next month by actor
George Clooney, where supporters will have to donate at least $33,400
to attend, or $353,400, nearly seven times the annual median income, if
they want “premium” seating.
“It is obscene
that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big money people to fund her
campaign,” Sanders told CNN. “Our events, we charge $15 or $50 for
people to come. So, it’s not a criticism of Clooney. It’s a criticism of
a corrupt finance system.”
About 85
percent of the votes at the July 25-28 Democratic National Convention in
Philadelphia, where a party nominee will be chosen to face the
Republicans in the Nov. 8 election, are being determined by state
nominating contests.
The other 15 percent
is held by party power brokers who are free to vote as they like,
meaning they could hold the key in a tight contest. Super-delegates
include party leaders and elected senators, members of the US Congress
and governors.
After Saturday’s contests,
the former secretary of state led Sanders by just under 300 pledged
delegates in the race for the 2,382 needed to be nominated.
Adding
in the support of super-delegates, which the party created in the early
1980s to give leaders more control over the nominating process, Clinton
had 1,712 delegates to 1,004 for Sanders, according to a tally by
RealClearPolitics.com.
The US senator from
Vermont needs to win up to two-thirds of the remaining delegates to
catch Clinton, who will keep piling up delegates even when she loses
under a Democratic Party system that awards them proportionally in all
states.
Sanders is turning his attention to his native New York, where Democratic voters will divide up 247 delegates on April 19th.
His
campaign manager on Sunday wrote a letter to Clinton’s manager
insisting that a planned televised debate between the candidates in
April be held in the state, which Clinton represented as a US senator
for eight years. Jeff Weaver said in the letter that the Clinton
campaign had resisted holding the debate in New York.
“Is the Secretary concerned about debating before the people who twice elected her to the US Senate?” Weaver wrote.
Spokesmen for Clinton did not respond to requests for comment.
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