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Communications union: Sanders is the candidate for Latino workers

What started out as a good week took a bad turn for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but his union support stands by him.

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What started out as a good week took a bad turn for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The news broke Friday that a Sanders campaign staffer breached confidential voter data collected by Hillary Clinton’s team. As a punishment, the Democratic party has restricted Sanders’ access to the crucial voter database just weeks before the Iowa caucus.

Before that things were going quite well.

His campaign announced that it hit two million unique contributors, more than any non-incumbent candidate in the history of U.S. politics. Then Sanders won nods from two big unions — Democracy for America (DFA) and Communication Workers of America (CWA).

The latter union, which represents 700,000 members across the country, is nonplussed by the setback, and has promised to support a massive voter turnout effort on Sanders’ behalf.

“Hundreds of thousands of our members will be mobilizing in primary states,” said Rafael Návar, CWA’s national political director. “We have some of the most active and sophisticated members, and I’d argue they will one-hundred percent be driving not only other members from our union, but also other people in the community in primary states.”

Návar helped organized the three-month long democratic process that lead to Sander’s endorsement. With 700,000 union members across the country, they had to use an online poll to build consensus. Návar saw a “resounding success in participation.” The poll received more votes than any other in the organization’s history, pointing to “definitive support for Senator Sanders.”

Návar says he’ll send the message that Sanders is the most progressive candidate for working Americans, especially Latinos and people of color.

“His platforms speaks to issues that the Latino community are very close to,” he said, citing his immigration policy proposals and advocacy for the working class.

A lot of ink has been spilled talking about the “foregone conclusion” that Hillary Clinton will seal the Democratic nomination, but Návar doesn’t buy it. He harkens back to 2007, when President Barack Obama was behind in a polls. Obama didn’t have nearly the amount of contributions as Sanders just a month and half away from the Iowa caucus, Návar said.

Nonetheless, Clinton has secured more than a dozen key labor endorsements, accounting for over half of the nation’s 14.6 million union members. She recently got nods from the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, as well as the massive public-sector union called County and Municipal Employees.

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