Longer Title: Ryan Hughes, MI and PA Bernie State Director, Accused of Accepting Hillary Super Pac Money
I have been holding onto this information, but since Niko House has posted a video regarding this allegation, I’ve decided to lay out for you what I know.
Ryan Hughes was the Sanders campaign’s state director for Michigan, and is now the state director for Bernie’s Pennsylvania campaign, as well. Mark Craig, the founder of a grassroots volunteer group in Michigan that supports Bernie Sanders, Flint4Bernie.org, had many dealings with Ryan Hughes after Hughes came to Michigan. Mark Craig also said he was one of the principle organizers for Bernie’s March 2nd rally and speech to thousands of people at the Breslin Center on the campus of Michigan State University. His grassroots organization was started in 2015, long before Ryan Hughes showed up as the paid director for Bernie’s campaign in Michigan.
Mr. Craig stated to me that knows a a senior employee who works for Priorities USA Action (“Priorities USA”), a Hillary Super Pac. In late February, after Craig casually mentioned to her that Ryan Hughes was running the Sanders’ campaign, that person told him Hughes was receiving direct payments from Priorities USA, all while Ryan Hughes worked as the Sanders’ campaign’s state director for Michigan, along with several other paid Sanders’ Michigan staffers.
Some context:
Priotities USA Action is a Super Pac, to which unlimited contributions may be made, that supports one candidate in this election cycle: Hillary Clinton. As noted in my post yesterday about Mayor Weaver of Flint MI endorsement of Hillary, the top donors to Priorities USA Action include many of Hillary’s wealthiest and most prominent supporters, including billionaires such as the J.B Pritzker and his wife, George Soros, James Simon (hedge fund manager worth over $15 Billion), Steven Spielberg, and many other wealthy individuals in the finance and entertainment industries.
If Ryan Hughes did receive payments from Hillary’s Super Pac, as Mark Craig alleges, this is more than just an ethical lapse in judgment. It would be even more evidence of Hillary operatives infiltrating Bernie’s campaign to sabotage it.
Mr. Craig certainly believes that Ryan Hughes did everything possible to destroy grassroots activism for Bernie in Michigan, including working against long standing groups that had formed to support Bernie back in 2015, and which were already coordinating with each other regarding each group’s activities and events (e.g., rallies and canvassing activities) among themselves. Among the many things Mark shared with me about Ryan Hughes performance are the following:
1. Refusing to requests by volunteers to politicize the Flint water crisis. Even though the Hillary campaign was doing so for months prior to the election, Hughes told volunteers not to make the water crisis a point of emphasis until only shortly before the date of the primary.
2. Telling volunteers they could no longer do door to door grassroots canvassing. Instead, volunteers in Flint were directed to canvas only those residential addressed that included likely Sanders’ voters. When volunteers went to those addresses they usually found abandoned homes, or people who were registered Republicans.
3. Ignored volunteers request to canvas in African American neighborhoods.
4. Kicked out all of the volunteers who were willing to work for free to staff the Flint office. Hughes replaced them with paid staff, many of whom had no Michigan ties.
Mark set up the Flint office, negotiating the lease and obtained internet service prior to Hughes arrival in Flint. He also paid for equipping the office out of his own pocket. Mark was never repaid by the campaign for these expenditures, even though he had relied on Hughes promise he would be reimbursed.
Obviously, many of the criticisms of Ryan Hughes could be attributed to incompetence, or simply an unwillingness to use a volunteer based model for the campaign. However, the charge that Hughes took money from Priorities USA, the largest independent Super Pac supporting Hillary, lends credence to the view that Hughes was actively working to hurt Bernie’s chances in Michigan. And in fact, Bernie won the Michigan primary largely on the strength of the vote in those counties where Hughes had no paid field staff on site and was forced to rely solely on volunteers, whom often disregarded his directives. Bernie lost the vote in those counties in the vicinity of Flint where Hughes’ was located, and where he had the most direct oversight over the actions of Bernie volunteers.
I hope to have more news for you soon, regarding the names of other Michigan staffers who may also have been receiving payments from Hillary’s Super Pac. Meanwhile, here is Niko House’s latest video about Ryan Hughes: