Sanders highlights his endorsement of Jackson

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign on Saturday sent a release to reporters highlighting his 1988 endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson ahead of the Vermont caucuses.

The release higlighted a video of Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vt., offering the endorsement.

{mosads}“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to place for nomination this evening the name of one of the great leaders of our time and a man who has waged the most courageous and exciting political campaigns in the modern history of this nation,” Sanders says in the speech endorsing Jackson. “I place for nomination, with a great deal of personal pride, the name of Jesse Jackson.”

The release of the video comes as Sanders seeks to shore up support from African Americans ahead of the SEC primaries.

An endorsement from Jackson could help Sanders, who is battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton is the clear favorite in South Carolina’s primary later this month.

Jackson has maintained that he’s not planning to endorse in the Democratic primary. The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jackson praised Sanders’s involvement in the civil rights movement in an interview published Friday.

It came on the heels of comments from fellow civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who said he “never saw” Sanders.

“Bernie was fighting back in Chicago not in the deep South – in affordable housing struggles in Chicago,” Jackson told the Daily Caller on Friday.

Jackson also questioned the wisdom of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, who is running against Sanders for the Democratic nomination. 

“My concern is, they’re choosing based on relationships… my concern is what is the agenda?” Jackson said. “What does the agenda need?

“Who has the most immigrant and figures plan for affordable health care – accessible affordable education and job training and housing re-construction and urban development?” he added. “That’s what we need.

“[Their endorsement] is based on their interests… My focus has been based on voter registration and issue development. That’s what I’m focused on.”