Clinton, Sanders dash about New York days before primary

NEW YORK (AP) — Bernie Sanders revved up what he said was a record crowd of nearly 29,000 in his boyhood borough, insisting that Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton cannot “tell the American people with a straight face that you’re going to stand up to big-money interests” when those same interests are giving millions of dollars to her supportive super PAC.

The Vermont senator also said during the rally at Prospect Park that the former secretary of state must have given a “pretty damned good speech” to the bank Goldman Sachs since it paid her more than $200,000 as a speaking fee.

Sanders has seized on the months-old arguments with increasing agitation in recent weeks. Sunday’s speeches came 48 hours before the New York primary — and on the heels of one of Clinton’s most high-profile campaign fundraisers yet.

Both Sanders and Clinton claim ties to New York. Brooklyn-native Sanders could use a win Tuesday to jar the front-runner, while Clinton wants to halt his momentum with a victory in the state that sent her to the U.S. Senate. Clinton has led the polls, and in a tacit acknowledgement that the election is likely to be tough, Sanders plans to be in soon-to-vote Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.

Clinton brought mothers who lost children to gun violence to a church in Mount Vernon, where she stressed her record on gun control. Clinton then hit get-out-the-vote events in Brooklyn and predominantly Hispanic Washington Heights.

She concluded her day on the Republican stronghold of Staten Island, where she touted bipartisanship and rallied a crowd of 500, questioning Sanders’ role in the effort to revamp health care in the 1990s.

“Well, where were you?” Clinton asked. “I mean, really.”

Sanders began his day at a church in Harlem, where he emphasized that the Black Lives Matter movement had shown him how black communities feel targeted by the police. He later greeted well-wishers at a park shadowed by the Brooklyn Bridge and toured public housing in Brooklyn.

Over the weekend, both candidates briefly left New York.

Sanders paid a visit to the Vatican. And Clinton made her way to California, where actor George Clooney hosted two weekend fundraisers for her. Donations for attendees at an event in San Francisco topped out at $353,000 per couple, which even Clooney said is an “obscene amount of money.”

The fundraiser even drew pro-Sanders demonstrators, Clooney recounted in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” When he went to talk with them, he said, they called him a corporate shill.

“That’s one of the funnier things you could say about me,” the Oscar-winner said, though he conceded that some of the protesters had a valid point regarding a different matter.

“Their T-shirts said, you know, ‘You sucked as Batman,’” said Clooney, the star of 1997′s “Batman & Robin,” one of the least memorable films in the superhero franchise. “And I was like, ‘Well, you kind of got me on that one.’”

Asked on CNN Sunday whether Clooney was siding with the wrong candidate, Sanders replied, “I think he is.” But he complimented Clooney for talking about money in politics, which has been the cornerstone of his campaign.

Sanders then used Clooney in his own fundraiser.

In an email seeking $2.70 contributions, Sanders highlighted the size of Clinton’s fundraising checks and the actor’s comments about them. Sanders has been able to finance his underdog bid through low-dollar online fundraisers. In each of the past three months he has out-raised Clinton.

Clooney said he likes many of Sanders’ ideas and would gladly raise money for him if he became the Democratic nominee. But the actor said he is supporting Clinton because of his admiration of her work as secretary of state, and he praised her for her efforts to avert a humanitarian crisis ahead of South Sudan’s independence.

Clooney faulted Clinton for not better explaining where the money she is raising goes. Most of it, he said, would end up being spent on down-ballot races including those for the Senate, which will confirm the next president’s picks for the Supreme Court.

If the right justice is confirmed for the spot now open on the court, Clooney said, political campaigns could “get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again.”