"I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don't want his endorsement!"
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel steers clear of 2016 race as Sanders goes on offensive
By Jeff Zeleny, Senior Washington Correspondent
Updated 11:39 AM ET, Mon March 14, 2016
Did anyone else catch this on CNN this morning?
I only saw the tail end of it.
Chicago (CNN)Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a weight on Hillary Clinton's candidacy, a political liability that Bernie Sanders has ferociously seized upon in hopes of pulling off what might once have been unthinkable: winning the primary Tuesday in Clinton's native Illinois.
Emanuel's rocky tenure leading Chicago has made him politically toxic among many voters here, particularly African Americans, and Sanders has worked to push him to the forefront of the Democratic presidential race. Few people are closer to the Clintons than Emanuel, but he has steered clear of the campaign, even as Sanders repeatedly invokes his name at rallies and in television ads.
"I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don't want his endorsement!" Sanders said at a Chicago rally. "I don't want the endorsement of a mayor who is shutting down school after school and firing teachers."
It's an odd piece of political irony that Emanuel could be complicating Clinton's prospects to win the Illinois primary.
His ascension to mayor, with stops along the way as White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and as an Illinois Congressman, began with his early work on Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. He also famously sparred with First Lady Hillary Clinton more than two decades ago in the White House, which landed him a demotion and nearly got him thrown out of the West Wing.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/14/politics/rahm-emanuel-clinton-sanders-campaign/index.html
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