After a field office for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was vandalized early Monday morning in Chicago, campaign surrogates are calling on one of his campaign rivals to tone down their “dangerous rhetoric.”
According to Chicago police, officers were called to Bloomberg’s office in the 1100 block of West Bryn Mawr Avenue just after 1 a.m. Monday. When they arrived, they found that the front windows of the building had been defaced, with the words “racist,” “sexist,” “GOP” and “oligarch” spray-painted on the windows.
In a statement, a campaign spokeswoman criticized the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, calling on the Democratic frontrunner to tone down the “dangerous rhetoric” of his campaign.
“This act of vandalism against our Chicago office mirrors those we’ve seen in recent weeks in states across the country,” spokeswoman Julie Kaviar said. “While we don’t yet know who is responsible, we know these attacks echo divisive language used by the Sanders campaign and its supporters. Democrats need to come together if we are going to defeat Donald Trump, and Senator Sanders needs to condemn these attacks and end his campaign’s dangerous rhetoric that is encouraging his supporters to engage in this behavior.”
The condemnation was similar to the one the campaign issued last week when another Bloomberg office was vandalized in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to the New York Times, campaign manager Kevin Sheekey issued a similar critique of Sanders, saying that the senator needed to “end the Trump-like rhetoric” he’s used on the stump.
Sanders has been critical of Bloomberg’s campaign, saying in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he worries that President Trump would “chew (Bloomberg) up and spit him out” in a general election showdown.
“(I’m) worried about an unprecedented amount of money being spent,” Sanders said of Bloomberg’s campaign. “We’ve never seen anything like this in American history. I just think that the American people will rebel against this type of oligarchic movement. We are a democracy. One person, one vote. Not a guy worth $60 billion buying an election.”
