GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) – Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders told a North Carolina crowd Sunday night that young people – particularly blacks and other minorities – are being devastated by high unemployment stemming from an inequitable economy and erosion of voting rights engineered by Republicans.
Wrapping up a weekend campaign swing through the South, the independent Vermont senator told a raucous meeting hall and an overflow crowd totaling more than 9,000 people “to join the political revolution” of his upstart campaign based less on big money and more on equality.
“The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics. They are sick and tired of establishment economics and they want real change in this country,” Sanders said near the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, “and that is what this campaign is about.”
While polls show Sanders doing well against Hillary Rodham Clinton in early-primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, Sanders also will have to go toe-to-toe against Clinton in Southern states. The North Carolina primary is expected in mid-March, about two months earlier than normal, in a bid by state lawmakers for the ninth-largest state in the country to wield more influence.
Sanders’ stops in Georgia and the Carolinas are in areas where black voters are expected to comprise substantial portions of the primary vote. Black voters cast 37 percent of the ballots in North Carolina’s 2008 Democratic presidential primary, when Barack Obama defeated Clinton. And Clinton still has a strong advantage in North Carolina within the black community, thanks in part to former President Bill Clinton. She already has visited the state for fundraising.