New Sanders ad lands indirect hit on Clinton

Bernie Sanders’ campaign released his first direct contrast ad of the Democratic primary on Thursday with a 30-second spot that implicitly criticizes Hillary Clinton on Wall Street reform -- a video that the Clinton campaign labeled a negative attack.

While the video — which will air in New Hampshire and Iowa as tensions rise between the two campaigns and polls tighten there — doesn’t mention Clinton by name, it describes the “two Democratic visions for regulating Wall Street,” a topic on which the two leading candidates have clashed.


Sanders communications director Michael Briggs denied that the spot is a negative ad, which the campaign has pledged to avoid. Sanders himself often speaks about never having run a negative ad, and his team pulled a New Hampshire digital spot in December that it thought was too close to being negative toward Clinton, also on the topic of her ties to Wall Street.

“It’s a contrast, and it’s certainly something that Bernie’s been saying for months and months and months,” said Briggs, adding that the campaign never said it wouldn’t make 'contrasts' with Clinton.

Still, chief campaign strategist Tad Devine, who makes Sanders’ ads, told Mother Jones in June that “if we do a classic comparative ad, it’s over. We’ll have to be smarter."

Clinton campaign leaders repeated that claim on Thursday afternoon in a conference call with reporters, where they refused to rule out retaliating with their own negative ads.

"We’re going to wait and see what Senator Sanders does," said chief Clinton strategist Joel Benenson, pointing to the precedent of Sanders pulling the last negative ad.

In the latest ad, Sanders repeats themes he covered in a much-anticipated speech on Wall Street reform earlier this month, in which he criticized Clinton, particularly over her opposition to reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act or similar measures.

“Will [the banks] like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules when I’m president? You better believe it,” he says, a line that also implicitly jabs at President Barack Obama.

And while the clip doesn’t hit Clinton directly, the Sanders camp circulated it to reporters along with a letter signed by 170 “economists and financial experts” — including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich — supporting his Wall Street reform plan. Clinton is named three times in the news release.

“We were very surprised today to see that Bernie Sanders had launched a negative television advertisement against Hillary. We were particularly surprised because he had personally pledged, and his campaign had pledged, never to run a negative advertisement,” said Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook on the conference call. “Sanders’ own campaign had said he was a different kind of politician."

“There’s a real question now," added Benenson. "Why he decided to do something that he had said so proudly he would never do."

