AP Photo Clinton, Sanders dial down Supreme Court rhetoric at Nevada rallies

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders stuck to their routine campaign speeches on Sunday — and only briefly touched on the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court vacancy.

In Nevada, Clinton and Sanders held back-to-back rallies as they fight to win the state’s Feb. 20 caucus. But they did not focus much attention on the sudden death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, a departure from Saturday evening when Clinton blasted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for vowing to bar a White House replacement for Scalia.


Clinton mentioned Scalia at an event at one of her campaign offices.

“This election is important for many reasons, it just got even more important yesterday because of the death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia,” Clinton said. “The president has the right and responsibility to nominate a new Supreme Court justice, which he has said he will do.”

At a rally in Sunday evening, which included an appearance with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Clinton stuck to defending her Wall Street reform plan and reining in campaign finance. She did not mention the Supreme Court.

Sanders briefly mentioned the Supreme Court vacancy on Sunday but did not deviate from his attempts to link Clinton to Wall Street. He, too, said Obama should proceed with nominating a Scalia successor.

“I just don’t think it looks good that for very overtly political reasons that the Republicans would deny this president the right to exercise his constitutional responsibility, which is to appoint members to the Supreme Court,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Before his official speech in a high school gym, Sanders gave an impromptu, two-minute pep talk outside to about 100 of his supporters who were denied entry due to capacity limits. Sanders took a bullhorn to speak to startled supporters as Secret Service officers scrambled to pat down people near the candidate.