Sanders has tried to cast himself as being above politics as usual. “Now that I think we’ve resolved your data, we’ve agreed on an independent inquiry, we should move on”.
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Don’t expect such a moment Saturday night.
In response to the harsh rebuke, the Sanders campaign charged Friday morning that the DNC was “actively attempting to undermine our campaign” in favor of Clinton.
Unlike the crowded 14-candidate Republican field, which was divvied up into two debates Tuesday in Las Vegas, just a trio of Democratic hopefuls remain in the mix. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) will join Clinton and Sanders on stage.
The breach was revealed at a time when Sanders’ candidacy is fading from its summer highs and Clinton is dominating the Democratic race, leading 59%-26% nationally, according to a Monmouth University poll Wednesday.
Debate moderators David Muir and Martha Raddatz likely won’t let Sanders escape so easily on the issue, nor will his Democratic rivals.
The reaction to the data breach, the depth of which was debated by all involved, tore open an ugly fault line between two camps that had so far engaged in a relatively civil White House campaign. The Democratic National Committee acted swiftly to deny the Sanders campaign future access to the party’s 50-state voter file, which contains information about millions of Democrats and is invaluable to campaigns on a daily basis.
The DNC had suspended the Sanders campaign’s access after finding that a Sanders staffer had allegedly taken advantage of a temporary voter database glitch and had tapped into confidential data from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The campaigns can add to that database – information they use to target voters and anticipate what issues might motivate them.
“Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want”.
“We are announcing today that if the DNC continues to hold our campaign hostage, we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking immediate relief”, he said.
Recent polls have generally shown Vermont Sen. A vendor mistake briefly took that firewall down – allowing four Sanders staffers to access Clinton’s information.
“We are asking that the Sanders campaign and the DNC work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign’s account”, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters in a conference call the Sanders staff had taken vital data that constituted a “strategic road map” for the campaign’s voter turnout models and strategies. “What is true is the data we collected and need to run a winning campaign is now being stolen from us by a DNC dominated by Clinton people”.
“We’re taking on the establishment, and I’m sure there are people within the Democratic establishment that are not happy about the overwhelming success that Senator Sanders is having all across this country”, he said.
A software error at the Democratic National Committee has led to a lawsuit from Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and accusations of theft from Clinton’s.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver accused the DNC of working to protect Clinton, pointing to the party’s limited debates at low-viewership periods such as Saturday nights as an example.
He added: “Clearly, they were concerned about their prospects in court”.
He said the campaign would have full access to the voter files again on Saturday morning, in time for a weekend of campaigning.
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in the statement that Bernie Sanders’ campaign “has now complied with the DNC’s request to provide the information that we have requested of them”.
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Summaries of data logs provided to the AP show the Sanders team spent almost an hour in the database reviewing information on Clinton’s high-priority voters and other data from almost a dozen states, including first-to-vote Iowa, New Hampshire and SC.
