Sanders campaign addresses 2016 campaign harassment concerns as 2020 decision looms
Veterans of Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign are pressing the campaign to address concerns about "sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign," a new report says, as the jockeying between possible Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 heats up.
After Politico reported that former 2016 staffers had sent top Sanders campaign aides a letter asking them to address the "untenable and dangerous dynamic that developed during our campaign," Sanders's campaign released a statement explaining that "we share in the urgency for all of us to do better."
Read more on the letter and the Sanders campaign's response from NBC News's Jane C. Timm.
Neither the letter nor the statement contain any specifics, but the Sanders campaign said that it took a "number of HR actions" during the 2016 campaign and that for Sanders's hardly-contested reelection bid in 2018, the campaign "developed and implemented more robust policies and processes regarding discrimination and harassment."
The push from former staff comes as Sanders, like virtually any Democrat who has considered running for president, weighs whether to jump into the 2020 race. The text of the letter, published by Politico, adds that that the former staff are asking for a meeting to both "mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle.
And it's not the only recent example of a new revelations about a Democratic hopeful's staff being accused of harassment.
One of California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris's top aides resigned earlier this month after The Sacramento Bee reported that he had settled a harassment complaint from when Harris was the state's attorney general for $400,000.
