Sanders says campaign will highlight billionaire Buttigieg donors ahead of New Hampshire primary

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that his campaign plans to emphasize the billionaire donors supporting fellow 2020 White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg in the lead-up  the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. 

“We are running all over this state, we’re talking to as many people as we can, we’re talking about what our agenda is,” Sanders said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.

“We’re going to contrast our view with Mayor Buttigieg’s,” he said, adding that  “one of the areas of contrast is at last count” Buttigieg had about 40 billionaire donors.

Asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan whether that “matters,” Sanders responded, “It matters enormously, that is precisely the problem with American politics.”

Candidates who receive contributions from pharmaceutical CEOs, Sanders said, “are not going to aggressively deal with the fact that in some case we pay 10 times more than our friends in Europe and Canada.”

Buttieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., is Sanders’s closest competitor in polling of the New Hampshire primary.

Asked whether he would support Buttigieg or former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg if either secures the Democratic president nomination, Sanders responded, “I think all of them will be far preferable to Donald Trump.”

But he added, “In the Democratic primary process, I will distinguish myself from the other Democratic candidates” on issues like  donors.

Brennan also asked if problems counting the votes and reporting the results in the Iowa caucuses last week were “damaging.”

“I kind of think that when you win the popular vote by 6,000 votes you win the election,” Sanders said, referencing his popular vote margin in the caucuses. 

“It is damaging, and it really saddens me,” he said.