Bernie Sanders delegates briefly took over the front of the room at the California delegation breakfast Thursday morning, chanting “Count our votes!” — in the latest sign that despite the Vermont senator’s best efforts, the Democratic Party still has unifying to do.
About a dozen Sanders delegates and supporters took the front of the ballroom Thursday morning after Housing Secretary Julian Castro spoke there and began chanting and waving signs.
“Count our votes! Count our votes!” the group chanted. Protesters, including one wearing a green Jill Stein T-Shirt, waved signs reading “Hillary for Fear” and a Sanders campaign sign altered to read “Well, we’re f—ed now.”
The meeting dissolved after about five minutes, as party officials took the stage and Clinton supporters gathered to counter the Sanders protesters with chants of “Hillary! Hillary!”
The protests come just hours before the final day of the Democratic convention was set to start and before Hillary Clinton is set to deliver her primetime address.
The Vermont senator, meanwhile, spoke at the Michigan, Minnesota and Tennessee delegation breakfast meeting in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
While he was occasionally interrupted by one attendee who loudly criticized Clinton, the event was largely incident-free, allowing Sanders to make his stump speech, adding his push to make the Democratic nominee the next president.
“It seems to me that we have a couple of missions in front of us, because we look at politics very different than others,” he told the crowd. “Issue No. 1 is that over the next few months we work as hard as we can to make sure that Donald Trump is defeated and Hillary Clinton is elected.”