Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign announced four new campaign co-chairs Thursday, selecting two high-profile female politicians and activists after several women came forward to detail instances of sexual harassment during his 2016 run.
The campaign announced former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D), San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Ben & Jerry’s co-founder and campaign finance reform advocate Ben Cohen will serve as national co-chairs.
{mosads}Turner, who also heads the progressive grass-roots advocacy group Our Revolution, was one of Sanders’s most public surrogates in the 2016 primary against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Cruz gained national prominence last year after she vocally criticized President Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria, which killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and caused widespread structural damage.
Turner lauded Sanders as a “beloved” senator and advocate, and Cruz described the Vermont Independent as “bold, committed and consistent.”
“To win this election and build a movement to defeat Donald Trump, we must bring together a team prepared to fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice — and that’s exactly what Nina, Ro, Carmen and Ben have been doing their entire lives. Together, along with a million-person grassroots movement, we will confront the powerful special interests that dominate the economic and political life of our country and enact an agenda that represents all the people, not just powerful special interests,” Sanders said in a statement.
The Sanders camp was rocked last year after several women who worked on his 2016 campaign criticized their superiors for how they handled several instances of sexual harassment. Sanders has maintained he was unaware of the allegations at the time and vowed his 2020 campaign would put in place strict rules to prevent similar instances in the future.
“We are going to have the strongest protocols to protect women and anybody else against any form of harassment,” Sanders told CBS News this week. “We are going to be training every employee who works for us and we’re going to give people who feel they’ve been harassed the opportunity to talk to people outside of the campaign.”