Bernie Sanders has denied he was aware of allegations female members of his staff were subjected to sexual harassment during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The Vermont senator apologised on Wednesday “to any woman who felt she was not treated appropriately”, following a New York Times story on Wednesday in which multiple workers made claims about pay inequality and unwanted sexual advances inside the political operation.
There is no suggestion Mr Sanders personally engaged in any impropriety, and he told CNN he had been “a little bit busy running around the country” during the campaign to have known of the allegations at the time.
“I am not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I'm hearing from now, that women felt they were disrespected, that there was sexual harassment which was not dealt with as effectively as possible,” he said.
One female staffer, Giulianna Di Lauro, told The Times a campaign surrogate harassed her repeatedly ahead of the Democratic primary in Nevada in February 2016.
She claimed when she reported the incident to a manager, he told her: “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” a version of events corroborated by another witness.
Meanwhile, others told the newspaper the grassroots and decentralised nature of the Sanders campaign left them confused by who to turn to in the event of misconduct.
“I did experience sexual harassment during the campaign, and there was no one who would or could help,” said Samantha Davis, a former director of operations for the campaign in Texas and New York.
The allegations come at an inconvenient time for Mr Sanders, who at 77 is gearing up for a second attempt at securing the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2020 after missing out two years ago to Hillary Clinton.
He insisted his campaign had introduced new protocols during his 2018 senate re-election bid to deal with allegations made by staffers.
“We put forward the strongest set of principles in terms of mandatory training, in terms of women, if they felt harassed, having an independent firm that they can go to,” he said.
“I think that that's kind of the gold standard of what we should be doing. Of course, if I run, we will do better next time.”
In the wake of the report, some Democratic activists and operatives complained about the aggressive culture during the first campaign when male staffers and supporters were sometimes labelled “Bernie bros”.
“I'm not the least bit surprised,” National Organisation for Women president Toni Van Pelt said, adding she was forced to block Mr Sanders’ supporters from her social media feeds in 2016.
“To me, it was really clear this was the way they were running the campaign.”
She cast the blame for the affair on Mr Sanders, whether he had direct knowledge of misconduct or not.
“If he didn't know, he has no business being in office,” she added.
Additional reporting by AP
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