Biden Campaign Disavows Outside Super PAC Attacks From Allies On Bernie Sanders Aimed At Latino Voters

Adrian CarrasquilloMar 15th, 2020, 4:20 pm
 

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Joe Biden’s campaign on Sunday disavowed attacks by two outside super PACs against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a day after Mediaite reported on the existence of mailers being sent to Latino voters in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois, which dismissed his political revolution and slammed him on his environmental record.

The first two mailers were sent to Latino voters in Phoenix by United We Succeed, which is affiliated with The Big Tent Project, a political group looking to help elect moderate candidates, led by former Sen. Joe Manchin aide Jonathan Kott.

They say Sanders “led efforts to dump Vermont’s nuclear waste in a poor Latino community in Texas.” A separate mailer sent by Biden super PAC Unite The Country, was received by Latino voters in Orlando and Chicago. Emblazoned with “We don’t need a revolution,” above a picture of Sanders and a lit match, it says Biden will defeat Trump and unite the country.

Arizona, Florida, and Illinois are three of the four states with primaries on Tuesday, and all three have large Latino populations.

“Negative attacks like this have no place in this primary and VP Biden disavows this attack and any like it from any outside group supporting him,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield responded on Twitter, a day after the mailers were revealed.

Factcheck.org found the Sanders environmental attack was misleading because while he “did support a bill that could have resulted in nuclear waste being placed near a poor, minority town in Texas,” the state ultimately rejected that location. While Sanders was a co-sponsor of the 1997 bill, Biden, then a senator, also voted for it, along with a majority of Democrats and Republicans.

On Saturday night, before the Biden campaign disavowed the attacks, Sanders aides took to Twitter to bash the mailers.

Sanders senior advisor Chuck Rocha said he is the one who has sent his campaign’s mailers, and they’ve only ever attacked one person: Donald Trump.

“Biden super pac now attacking @BernieSanders by sending attack mail to Latinos in AZ, FL and IL. For the record, I made every piece of our Latino mail and we never attacked anyone but Donald Trump,” he wrote.

Directing her message to Latinos in Arizona and Florida, Belen Sisa, the campaign’s Latino press secretary added that “the establishment is scared.”

Tags: