The Progressive

NewsWire

A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Email:,press@sunrisemovement.org

Contested Convention Increasingly Likely as Sanders, Backed by Young and Latinx Voters, Wins California and Half of Texas Delegates

LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

The chance of a contested Democratic convention rose significantly as Sen. Sanders emerged victorious in California and won close to half of Texas' delegates on Tuesday night, propelled by support from 71% of Latinx voters ages 18-29 in California and 66% of the same group in Texas. Despite widespread voter suppression across the Lone Star State amongst communities of color and young voters, and an onslaught of positive earned media coverage for Vice President Biden in the preceding days, it's becoming increasingly likely that neither candidate will win a majority of the delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

"This is still anyone's race," said Stephen O'Hanlon, Sunrise's Communications Director. "Biden won because he had a couple days of wall-to-wall, positive media coverage coming out of South Carolina and late-deciders broke for him. Now that it's a two-way race the contrast is going to become clearer. The exit polls last night showed that Bernie's platform -- Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, free college, and overhauling our campaign finance system -- is incredibly popular. Biden's record is directly at-odds with the priorities of the Democratic base, and we're going to put that in the spotlight more in coming weeks."

Sanders' multiracial, youth base also led insurgent progressive candidates running on Green New Deal platforms to be within striking distance of major upsets in Texas, most notably in Jessica Cisneros' race against Rep. Henry Cuellar, a 15-year incumbent dubbed "Big Oil's Favorite Democrat." Sunrise Movement, which has over 300 chapters nationwide, made over 110,000 calls in Texas and racked up 115,000 calls just this past weekend for Senator Sanders. Progressive candidate Mike Sieigel also advanced to a run-off election in TX-10, ahead of his establishment-backed rivals.

"No Democrat has won the presidency without the support of an enthusiastic youth base in more than twenty years. Only Bernie has shown that he can pull together the coalition that put Obama in office in 2008," said Aracely Jimenez, a Sunrise Movement spokesperson. "This race is a choice between returning to the broken, status-quo politics of the last decade, or nominating someone who has the courage and moral clarity to confront our deepest challenges with solutions at the scale needed to solve them. We have a chance to nominate Bernie Sanders -- and our generation is ready to go all-out in making it happen."

Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.