“I applaud senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of our politics and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality and I know together we will get that done”, said Hillary Clinton. “When we were competing in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and all the March 1 states we had a thousand staffers”.
Advertisement
“It will be hundreds of staff members”, Mr. Sanders said.
But after front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gained nearly insurmountable leads earlier this week, Kasich and Sanders arrived in OR with grim chances of changing course. “But right now, we have to use all of the resources we have and focus them on the remaining states”.
The layoffs aren’t the first for the Sanders campaign, but it was the most monumental, Politico reported Wednesday. With only 14 contests remaining, the adviser said, there just wasn’t a need for all the field workers. He did not specify how many people are being let go or what percentage of Sanders’s sprawling staff they represent.
Even so, Sanders’ speech Wednesday at Purdue University in West Lafayette signaled an acknowledgment that his campaign’s way forward might be influencing the next presidency rather than winning it. Many of those staffers were hired specifically to work on the ground in states which have already voted and there’s simply no point in keeping them around unless it was to begin the long process of getting out the vote for November.
Sanders emphasized he would be concentrating his campaign on the upcoming elections in California, where he is designating the majority of his resources in hopes of obtaining a majority of delegates before the convention.
In this year’s presidential race when every delegate counts, Oregon’s May 17 primary – where 74 Democratic delegates and 28 Republican delegates are up for grabs – has made national headlines as a possible game-changer in determining the parties’ nominees.
Advertisement
Mr. Loeser said Mr. Sanders’s comments showed that he was beginning to pivot his message, perhaps because people within the Sanders campaign are realizing that the senator would not be able to beat Mrs. Clinton. “Every day we’re getting attacked and our record is being distorted”, he said.
