Nevada Democratic Party files complaint against Sanders campaign

The Nevada Democratic Party complains to the national party about the campaign of Bernie Sanders after violence by the senator’s supporters during the state convention on Saturday.

The convention is shut down on Saturday night because security at the Paris Las Vegas hotel can no longer ensure order. The gathering closes with some Sanders supporters throwing chairs; later, some make death threats against state party chairwoman Roberta Lange.

Sanders’s backers had been protesting convention rules that ultimately led to Hillary Clinton winning more pledged delegates. Clinton won the state’s caucuses in February, 53-47, but Sanders backers hoped to pick up extra delegates by packing county and state party gatherings.

The letter by the state party’s general counsel, Bradley S. Schrager, warns that similarly chaotic scenes could unfold in Philadelphia, site of the Democratic National Committee’s July convention.

“We believe, unfortunately, that the tactics and behavior on display here in Nevada are harbingers of things to come as Democrats gather in Philadelphia in July for our National Convention,” Schrager writes.

“We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sanders campaign’s penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior — indeed, actual violence — in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats.”

— AP