Zach Schneider, among the campaign’s lead tech staffers, voluntarily left on Friday after six months when the in-house text messaging program he had been working on was cut, he told POLITICO. | Getty More Sanders staffers exit campaign

A handful of high-level staffers have left Bernie Sanders’ campaign in recent days, including his director of technology and three of the four members of his original senior leadership team in California — a state his team has said is critical to his bid for the Democratic nomination.

The moves come at a time of contraction for the campaign, which let go of hundreds of field staffers earlier this month amid slowed fundraising.


Zach Schneider, among the campaign’s lead tech staffers, voluntarily left on Friday after six months when the in-house text messaging program he had been working on was cut, he told POLITICO.

Text For Bernie, the campaign’s program for having volunteers send text messages to targeted individuals — voters in primary states on Election Day, for example — had been run for the first few months of the campaign through a third-party company called Hustle before Schneider and his team developed their own program in time to get out the vote for this month’s Indiana primary.

Soon after that three-week undertaking, however, Hustle raised concerns about Schneider’s program and the campaign decided to scrap his version and return to the firm.

“Once that happened, I didn’t really have a lot to do on the campaign,” Schneider explained.

Meanwhile, both California Operations Director Paul Betancourt and Constituency Outreach Director Masha Mendieta were let go last week following the departure of State Director Michael Ceraso, meaning only one member of the senior leadership team is left in place in the state with most delegates at stake.

Veteran Sanders operative Robert Becker, who led the team in Iowa, took over for Ceraso last week after Ceraso left following strategic disagreements with members of campaign leadership over his wish to spend more on field and digital organizing rather than television advertising.

The turnover comes less than a month before the California primary, in which Sanders forces hope to collect a huge trove of delegates to bring to July’s Democratic convention. Recent polling has shown Clinton ahead in California, but Sanders has spent increasing amounts of time in the state, and he is likely to return frequently before the June 7 primary.

Sanders’ campaign declined to comment for this story.