Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is urging Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to help unite the party ahead of the Democratic National Convention amid growing infighting.
“I’m not one of those people [to say], ‘Tell Bernie to get out,’ ” Mikulski, a supporter of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, told CNN on Thursday. “My feeling is follow the rules. What I’m saying is that the process is established by each state and territories and Democrats abroad, play out, then when it’s over, it’s over.”
{mosads}Mikulski said the end of the fight should be June, a month before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“I’m a supporter of the full process playing out. I know it’s hard. I know it’s a slog. … But I want to be sure that all 50 states, territories, Democrats abroad — everybody has their say,” she added.
“So when we go to the convention, everybody’s spoken. But when the process is over, through either primary or caucus, then it’s over.”
Mikulski’s comments come as some Democrats worry about uniting the party as the fight between Sanders and Clinton grows more heated.
Sanders on Tuesday swore he would take his fight for the presidency all the way to the convention in July and insists he can overtake Clinton in delegates.
“Now some people say we’ve got a steep hill to climb, and that’s absolutely true,” Sanders told supporters in Carson, Calif., on Tuesday.
“But together we’ve been climbing that steep hill from day one in this campaign, and we’ll continue to fight for every last vote until June 14, and then we’ll take our fight to the convention.”
Sanders’s campaign is also feuding with establishment Democrats after Saturday’s chaotic Democratic convention in Nevada.
At that event, Sanders’s supporters began loudly protesting the convention’s results and booing Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) over the exclusion of some of Sanders’s delegates.
Mikulski on Thursday said Sanders must encourage his supporters to refrain from similar disruptions in the future.
“Well, I would like Bernie to be Bernie,” she said of the Vermont senator. “I admire Bernie in many ways, and particularly his advocacy for nonviolence, the principles of one Dr. [Martin Luther] King and others.
“But he needs to reaffirm his own belief in that principle and to encourage his volunteers to follow the same,” she added.