'A complete lack of competence': Bernie Sanders furious with followers in key battleground state

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has grown increasingly unhappy with how supporters of his who took control of the Democratic Party state apparatus in Nevada have run things in the past two years, and he's making his feelings known through his surrogates.

According to a report from Politico, the senator from Vermont's opinion of the tenure of supporter Judith Whitmer, who took control of the state party as a progressive, has taken a turn for the worse as she now faces ouster.

Politico's Holly Otterbein wrote, "Socialists had managed to bring down one of the most powerful establishment forces in the nation, the famed Democratic machine built by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They saw it as a blueprint for the progressive transformation of state parties. Two years after the experiment began, there are regrets."

According to the report, there is a belief in Sanders' camp that Whitmer has abandoned her progressive leanings, and support for her further leadership has disappeared.

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“The senator is pretty disappointed in Judith’s chairmanship, specifically around her failure to build a strong grassroots movement in the state,” explained a source close to the Vermont senator. “A lot of us feel sad about what could have been. It was a big opportunity for Bernie-aligned folks in the state to prove some of the folks in the establishment wrong. And that hasn’t happened.”

Peter Koltak, former Nevada senior adviser for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, was considerably blunter in his assessment.

"There just has been a complete lack of competence or ability to accomplish anything significant,” he lamented. “Look, there’s a lot of well-meaning activists involved there, but they don’t understand the ins and outs of how you build modern campaigns.”

Noting that Whitmer's tenure has "fragmented" the state party, Politico's Otterbein reports, "Whitmer’s critics — including those in the progressive wing — counter that any failures were largely hers. They accused her of having poor relationships with elected officials, of being a poor fundraiser, of failing to build the grassroots organizing infrastructure she promised, and of antagonizing leaders in the party."

The Politico report added, "They’ve bashed her over the state party’s decision to back a sheriff who appeared to support chokeholds as well as a lieutenant governor candidate, Debra March, who primaried the sitting Democratic lieutenant governor, who had been appointed by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak. They also accused her of trying to rig the March 4 election for state party chair by removing members from the state central committee, which chooses the chair."

The report notes that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has issued a statement they will not support Whitmer's reelection after helping boost her to her current position.

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