Nurses union vows to continue backing Bernie Sanders through its super PAC, despite his anti-super PAC stance
Source: Wash post
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders takes part in a presidential debate sponsored by CNN in Las Vegas. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A super PAC financed by the country’s largest nurses union has spent more than $610,000 on behalf of Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, including $41,000 on new billboards touting him in the early caucus states of Iowa and Nevada, according to expenditure reports filed Monday.
Union officials said they plan to continue spending through the political action committee, National Nurses United for Patient Protection — even though Sanders has repeatedly denounced the influence of super PACs and has insisted that he doesn’t have one flanking his upstart campaign.
“We never considered it a super PAC,” said Jean Ross, co-president of the nurses union. “This isn’t a corporation or an individual who can write out millions of dollars at a time. This is money that nurses put out for things that they believe in.”
Aides to the senator from Vermont also sought to draw a distinction Monday between the efforts of the nurses’ super PAC and independent groups sanctioned by other presidential candidates, many of which are run by their former aides or close associates.
“Unlike others, we have not started a super PAC, are not coordinating with a super PAC, and we have not fundraised for a super PAC,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager. “We stand by our position that we do not want the help of a super PAC.”
[Bernie Sanders having outpatient hernia repair, his office says]
Weaver also said that the two other Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, are being supported by super PACs that have attacked fellow Democrats — something Sanders hasn’t done and has no intention of doing.
National Nurses United, a 185,000-member union, endorsed Sanders in August after polling its members and a vote of its leadership.
“It’s not surprising that we support Bernie Sanders,” Ross said. “He is certainly in support of making sure that people who need health care get it, and that’s been a cause of ours for a long time. He doesn’t just agree with us, he shows up.”
In late August, the union began spending money in support of Sanders through its affiliated super PAC, National Nurses United for Patient Protection. The group’s activity, which was first disclosed by the Sunlight Foundation, has so far included mailers, billboards and online ads touting Sanders in early nominating states.
Ross said that Sanders’ opposition to super PACs “doesn’t give me pause at all” about spending through the group, which can accept unlimited donations.
“We have it because we have to somehow finance what we believe in,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we are ever going to be competitive with a true super PAC.”
Unlike candidate-specific super PACs supporting other 2016 contenders, the nurses’ super PAC is financed only by dues paid by the union’s members, not contributions from wealthy individuals, officials said.
[After Paris, Sanders sticks to script — and it doesn’t say much about fighting terrorism]
In 2014, the nurses union transferred $2.4 million to its affiliated super PAC, Federal Election Commission filings show. The group did not report receiving any donations in the first half of 2015, according to its most recent FEC report, although it did receive a $127,000 refund from Progressive Kick, an Oakland-based super PAC that collaborated with the union on a campaign against Republican governors in 2014.
Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the nurses’ union, said that its super PAC does not resemble the kind of personalized super PACs that have proliferated in the 2016 campaign.
“There’s no mystery here,” he said. “There’s nothing here of anyone trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. These are working people who feel passionately about having a government that works for everybody.”
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Sanders has sought to make a virtue of his distaste for super PACs.
During a recent interview on NPR, for example, he said: “I made a decision — now it wasn’t an easy decision — I said if I am going to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, I am not going to have a super PAC.”
