Bernie Sanders wouldn't commit to sharing his email list with the DNC

published 26 February 2017

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) refused during an interview on CNN's State of the Union to say he would share his presidential campaign email list with the Democratic National Committee. His evasion came less than 24 hours after his preferred candidate for DNC chair, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), lost to the establishment-supported former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.

"Where we are right now is that we are going to support and have supported and will continue to support those candidates who have the guts to stand up for working families and take on the big money interests," Sanders said in response to a question about the list from host Jake Tapper. "What we are going to do is support those candidates who have the guts to stand up to the 1 percent and fight for the 99 percent."

As Tim Murphy explained at Mother Jones earlier this month, Sanders' campaign "rewrote the rules of email fundraising during his campaign by relentlessly courting small-dollar contributors," many of them first-time political donors. The DNC is "desperate" for the list, Murphy said, though the Sanders camp believes party leadership is missing the point: "The list wasn't the campaign's secret weapon; Sanders was."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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