TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The presidential campaign of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that it is shedding “hundreds” of staffers in a move to “right-size” with just a few contests left on the Democratic nominating calendar.
Word of the layoffs came a day after Sanders lost four of five Eastern primaries to Hillary Clinton, rendering his path to the party’s nomination virtually nonexistent.
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told reporters traveling with Sanders that the decision, first reported by the New York Times, would have been made regardless of Tuesday’s election results. He did not specify how many people are being let go or what percentage of Sanders’s sprawling staff they represent.
“It’s something we’ve been talking about for quite a while now,” Briggs said. “With 10 states now left to go, we need fewer people in place than we had been doing when there were 50 states to go. So the campaign has been doing some right-sizing.”
He said the move was not a reflection of a slowdown in fundraising – one area of the campaign where Sanders has been outpacing Clinton in recent months.
Still, the move underscored Sanders’s long-shot status. A campaign more confident of its prospects of winning the nomination would generally be more inclined to leave people in place to focus on general-election preparations.
On Tuesday, Sanders lost to Clinton in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware. Sanders won in Rhode Island.
In an interview Wednesday with The Washington Post, Sanders said he thinks the odds are against him but that he still has a “narrow” path to the nomination. Much of his focus in the coming weeks will be in California, the state with the single largest trove of Democratic delegates.
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