Bernie Sanders’ media strategists split from his 2020 presidential campaign by hunterw
WASHINGTON — Some of the top strategists in Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign will not be taking part in his next bid for the White House. Devine Mulvey Longabaugh, a progressive consulting firm whose partners served as media consultants for Sanders’s run in 2016, provided a statement to Yahoo News on Tuesday saying that the firm is “stepping away” from the senator’s 2020 campaign.
The firm’s statement noted that it had “produced 275 television, radio and digital ads” for the 2016 Sanders campaign. Many of those ads, particularly one that featured the Simon & Garfunkel song “America,” received critical acclaim and were widely credited with helping Sanders mount a surprisingly strong primary challenge to Hillary Clinton with his message of democratic socialism.
Devine has most recently been in the headlines because of his association with President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, working with him to help elect the pro-Russian Victor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine in 2010. Last year, Manafort was convicted on multiple felony counts, including some that were related to his failing to properly register his lobbying for Yanukovych and to declare his income from the work.