Sanders seeks big turnout for New York upset
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — With one week to go until the New York presidential primary, Bernie Sanders rallied supporters to show up in record numbers, telling a capacity crowd Tuesday that with a large voter turnout "we're going to win."
"This is the political revolution," the Vermont senator said, touching off thunderous applause from the estimated 6,400 people who filled Bill Gray's Regional Iceplex in Brighton.
He spoke for about an hour, with a wide-ranging address that hit on familiar themes: guaranteed health care for all, a call for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, making public colleges and universities tuition free, and reforming a "rigged economy" to restore the middle class.
During a later interview, he discussed helping minority businesses address unemployment in the inner city, New York's SAFE Act and the need for "a revolution in mental health treatment in this country."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, leads Sanders in New York (54% to 42% ) in the latest Quinnipiac University survey. Billionaire businessman Donald Trump, meanwhile, held a commanding 56% to 20% lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the GOP race.
The rallies are providing thousands of western New Yorkers with an experience many had only seen on television.
"It's the first chance we've had to have the candidates be this close to us," said Patty Preston, 41, an English teacher from Belfast who hoisted a sign that read: "Teachers for Bernie."
That excitement is spilling into her school, where students are wearing candidate T-shirts, recently held an election poll, and are writing papers about the election.
All this is new, she said. "It will be interesting to see how it goes once the primaries are over."
While Clinton and Trump sought to tailor their remarks to Rochester during their stump speeches, Sanders did not. He pledged, as he has in other stops around the state, to fight for a national ban on hydraulic fracturing, called action on climate change a "moral responsibility," and said he would use executive action if necessary to enact immigration reform.
He also promised to invest in inner cities, "instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires." In a later interview, he said his administration would review and likely increase federal contracting goals for small and disadvantaged businesses.
"What's most important is that you have to make sure that the federal money and the contracts that are out there go to those folks who need it the most," Sanders said.
Noting that youth unemployment and underemployment is highest among black people, he added: "If we want to put those young people to work, I think probably the most effective way is to provide support to small- and medium-sized African-American businesses."
The rally drew a largely college-aged crowd. Supporters chanted "Bernie! Bernie!" and hoisted signs that read, "Talk Bernie to me" or "Save the world, Bernie!"
Some, like Erik Mebust, 20, a junior at State University of New York Geneseo, skipped class and arrived more than three hours early to see Sanders. Mebust said Sanders has been "leading the conversation on income inequality before anyone heard of that issue."
Others, like Romell Reliford, 24, of Rochester and a junior at Monroe Community College, said they were undecided, weighing Clinton's experience as a former senator and secretary of state, to Sanders' "fresh" approach.
Brittany Jordan, 20, who will graduate from MCC this semester, said she is the only one in her family backing Sanders, noting his history on civil rights and his attention to college students.
Clinton this week has ramped up criticism of Sanders on gun control, organizing an event dedicated to the subject on Monday in Port Washington. The focal point has been his Senate vote giving immunity to gun manufacturers.
Sanders had noted his D-minus voting records from the National Rifle Association and long-standing opposition to assault weapons. Asked during the interview if New York's SAFE Act, considered one of the nation's toughest gun control measures, should be duplicated elsewhere, Sanders said, "states should have the right to do what they choose to do."
"Different communities will react differently. Different states will react differently" he said. "Being someone who comes from a state that has virtually no gun control, I think I am in a unique position to put together a consensus to make sure people in this country who should not have guns do not have guns."