Sanders blasts Bloomberg entering the Democratic race

CHARLES CITY — Vermont Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is taking shots at the latest billionaire to consider jumping in the race.

“We say to Michael Bloomberg and other billionaires: ‘Sorry, you ain’t going to buy this election,’” Sanders said Saturday night.

On Friday, aides to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg filed paperwork for Bloomberg to run in presidential primaries in Alabama and Arkansas. At a rally in Coralville, Sanders criticized Bloomberg’s reported plans to skip campaigning in the states that start the 2020 campaign.

“You’re not going to get elected president by avoiding Iowa,” Sanders said, and the audience cheered, as Sanders continued, “by avoiding New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.”

Sanders called Bloomberg’s flirtation with a late entry into the 2020 race shows an “arrogance” that advertising rather than speaking directly voters is how to win the presidency.

“You’re not going to buy this election by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on media in California,” Sanders said in Coralville.

Sanders spent the weekend campaigning in Iowa with events in Orange City and Charles City Sunday.