Bernie’s campaign is in chaos and needs suspended.
Via NBC News:
In a major shake-up to Bernie Sanders’ just-launched presidential bid, some of his top strategists have left the campaign.
Tad Devine, Mark Longabaugh and Julian Mulvey, partners in a political consulting firm who all played leading roles in Sanders’ 2016 campaign for the White House, are parting ways with the senator, citing creative differences.
“The entire firm has stepped away. We’re leaving the campaign,” Longabaugh told NBC News on Tuesday. “We just didn’t have a meeting of the minds.”
Devine, a veteran Democratic presidential operative, was a familiar presence on TV in 2016 as Sanders’ chief strategist, responsible for setting the early direction of the campaign when few other Washington insiders believed the little-known Vermont independent could be a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Longabaugh helped design and implement the campaign’s delegate-hunting roadmap and negotiated with key outside players like the Democratic National Committee on issues like debates.
Mulvey helped craft the firm’s ads for Sanders, including his best-known commercial, which featured the Simon & Garfunkel song “America.”
All together, the firm produced 275 television, radio and digital ads for that campaign and was involved in much of the campaign’s top decision-making.
“The campaign appreciates all the good work DML has done and wishes them well,” Sanders’ new campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, said in a statement, referring to the name of their firm.
The firm had been hiring staff in anticipation of Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and produced the video Sanders used to announce his campaign last week.
“We are leaving because we believe that Sen. Sanders deserves to have media consultants who share his creative vision for the campaign,” Devine, Longabaugh and Mulvey said in a joint statement.
Both sides insist the departure was amicable, but some tensions between Sanders and Devine were evident in the final days of the 2016 primary campaign when Sanders pressed on with his run after it became clear he couldn’t win the nomination against Hillary Clinton.
More recently,Devine has faced scrutiny for his consulting work years ago in Ukraine with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has pleaded guilty to financial crimes and is awaiting sentencing.