Sanders stands by A.C. workers
ATLANTIC CITY - With a Trump casino carcass next door and a local union in a protracted war with billionaire Carl Icahn, Atlantic City provided Bernie Sanders with plenty of material Monday.
ATLANTIC CITY - With a Trump casino carcass next door and a local union in a protracted war with billionaire Carl Icahn, Atlantic City provided Bernie Sanders with plenty of material Monday.
"I don't have to tell you too much about Donald Trump," the Democratic presidential candidate told a crowd inside Boardwalk Hall, which is next to the closed and stripped-of-all-branding Trump Plaza casino hotel. "You know more about him than most Americans."
Sanders took sharp aim at both Trump and Icahn at the impassioned morning rally.
"What we're seeing in Atlantic City encapsulates the ugliness and the greed we're seeing all across the country," the Vermont senator told about 2,000 people, including casino workers, students, striking Verizon workers, and others who gathered inside the Adrian Phillips Ballroom.
"Carl Icahn and Donald Trump, you guys are not going to get it all," Sanders said.
Atlantic City's decline, and Trump's history as a casino owner whose companies went bankrupt four times, has been bandied about in this year's presidential debates, ads, and tweets. But Sanders is the first candidate who has taken a campaign directly to the beleaguered seaside resort.
"What we are talking about is workers right here who are seeing their paid lunch breaks eliminated, who have seen a 35 percent cut in their total compensation, who have seen billionaires like Carl Icahn worth $21 billion come in here and attack the standard of living of dishwashers and maids," Sanders said.
"We are going to tell the Carl Icahns of the world that that greed is not acceptable."
The crowd included about 100 members of Unite Here Local 54, the casino workers union, which has suffered thousands of layoffs from casino closures and has endorsed Sanders. About 15 members met with Sanders before he spoke. Workers at the Trump Taj Mahal lost health care, pension, and other benefits when Icahn took control in bankruptcy court.
"There's no better example of billionaires bullying the little guy than Atlantic City," said Taj cocktail server Valerie McMorris, 47.
Icahn responded later Monday to Sanders, blaming the union for casino closures and saying that Sanders had made remarks "tying me to the difficulties facing Atlantic City - without even bothering to give me a call."
Unite Here, Icahn said, "has squeezed and squeezed the city's most important employers" and insisted on an "exorbitant health plan which benefits their top executives." He said his investment had saved jobs.
"But I do agree with Bernie Sanders on one thing," Icahn said in the statement, "the income gap in this country is a major problem, and I agree (with certain exceptions) that those that manage capital as well as many CEOs are ridiculously overpaid."
Icahn has expressed support for Trump, who has publicly considered making Icahn his Treasury secretary.
Inside Boardwalk Hall, the site of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Sanders predicted that he would win the New Jersey and California primaries June 7 and then get to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July with a majority of pledged delegates. That assessment excludes superdelegates who have pledged support to Hillary Clinton. Sanders said he believed he could still win the nomination.
Sanders told the crowd he supported the bartenders, waitresses, and dishwashers of Local 54 and their struggle to hang on to benefits, wages and pensions. "I stand with those workers," he said to cheers.
Sanders did not mention Atlantic City's near-death spiral as it staves off bankruptcy while its elected officials resist a state takeover. In the run-up to Sanders' speech, mentions of Gov. Christie received more boos than those of Trump.
Bob McDevitt, Local 54 president, noted that Atlantic City has been at the center of change, including the 1964 convention, where civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer said famously: "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Earlier, at Local 54 headquarters on Atlantic Avenue, doubling as a Sanders campaign headquarters, McMorris, the cocktail server, said Sanders' message resonated in the casino town.
"His No. 1 platform is, he's against billionaire bullies on Wall Street taking advantage of the little guy," McMorris, a second-generation casino worker, said.
McMorris contrasted Icahn and current corporate owners of casinos with the personal owners who used to "walk through the casinos" - like, she said, Trump and Steve Wynn. Her reference to Trump in that context reflects the conflicted feelings in town, where many employees remember Trump fondly, but creditors and vendors who were paid pennies on the dollar as a result of bankruptcy do not.
On the Boardwalk before the rally, Stockton University political science student Maryam Sarhan, 21, said she supported Sanders because "he's a genuine candidate who's trying to represent the working class."
"Given the economic position of Atlantic City at the moment," she said, "someone like Bernie understands the plight of the people who haven't been given the support that they need."
609-823-0453 @amysrosenberg
