Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says the super-PAC supporting rival Hillary Clinton is leading a charge of attacks against him funded by special-interest money.
“We are being attacked all of the time, and I think that is unfortunate,” Sanders told the New Hampshire Union Leader on Saturday.
{mosads}“I think that it’s unfortunate that the secretary has a super PAC funded by wealthy and special interests and that they’re going very heavily negative on us.”
Sanders was specifically responding to a report from the Burlington Free Press, which disclosed the Correct the Record super-PAC’s attempts to pass opposition research to the paper off the record.
It’s a practice commonplace among many campaigns and political groups on both sides of the aisle, but one that rarely makes its way into the news because of agreements between reporters and those groups.
The independent Vermont senator is cutting closer to Clinton with just days until the first votes are cast in Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders is trailing by only a few percentage points in the Hawkeye State, and continues to hold a lead over Clinton in the Granite State.
He also shot back at the Clinton campaign’s assertion that his call for a single-payer health care plan would dismantle Obamacare and other vital healthcare programs, explaining that his plan would replace those programs with a system he believes will be more effective.
“Getting a Medicare-for-all single-payer plan through would be difficult,” he told the paper.
“We’d have to rally the American people. But no one is talking about dismembering the gains that we have made. It is moving on beyond that to cover all people.”