Unions endorse Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New York battle

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won his first endorsement from a fellow US senator, and he and rival Hillary Clinton both announced backing from New York City labour unions as they battled to win next week’s state primary.

The Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing 42,000 workers in the New York region, backed Sanders as he struggled to dent Clinton’s lead in a state each has called home.

Deriding “fierce attacks” against unions over the last several decades, Sanders called organised labour the last line of defence against corporate greed in America.

“We’ve got to stand together, take on the big-money interests and make it clear that our government works for all of us, not just the 1 percent,” the US senator from Vermont said.

Clinton, a former two-term senator from New York, scored her own union endorsement from Local 3 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing more than 27,000 area workers.

Sanders trails Clinton in the number of delegates won in primaries and caucuses. The former US secretary of state has 1,758 delegates to Sanders’ 1,069.

A candidate needs 2,383 delegates to win the nomination to be the party’s candidate in the November 8 election.

Clinton yesterday also won backing from New York’s Daily News, which called her a “super-prepared warrior realist” who understands the economic toll the country has faced, while labelling Sanders “utterly unprepared” with “politically impossible” goals.

The newspaper’s editorial board interview with Clinton’s Brooklyn-born rival this month prompted criticism of Sanders as lacking detailed understanding of some of his main policy initiatives.

Meanwhile, Texas senator Ted Cruz blasted rival Donald Trump, accusing the Republican front-runner of being a bully, inciting violence, and using dirty tricks to intimidate voters and delegates, as Trump continued to rail against a nominating system he says is crooked and rigged.

Using some of the harshest rhetoric of the campaign to date, Cruz said his billionaire rival is a bad businessman who has been surrounded by sycophants his entire career. “Donald’s whole pitch is he’s a great businessman,” Cruz said, adding given how he runs his campaign, “it appears he can’t run a lemonade stand”.

The comments came as both campaigns work tirelessly to secure delegates who will back them at the Republican Party convention this summer in Cleveland.

So far, Trump has appeared badly caught out by a better-organised Cruz operation, prompting the billionaire to rail against the Republican electoral system, claiming the will of the voters is being denied.