Photo of Faiz Shakir from ACLU website.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has hired Faiz Shakir as campaign manager for his 2020 presidential run, reports CNN.
According to India West, Shakir, 39, is the first Pakistani American and the first Muslim American to head up a U.S. presidential campaign.
Shakir made a name for himself as an editor at the website ThinkProgress, which is heavily associated with Democratic think-tank Center for American Progress.
He has previously worked as an adviser to Nancy Pelosi and to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. He joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in January 2017 and had been serving as the national political director, helping lead multiple legal battles against the Trump administration. Shakir held a meeting with his ACLU team on Tuesday to announce that he was leaving to join the Sanders campaign, reports The Daily Beast.
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“Faiz is a diehard progressive who knows how to work effectively within the system,” said Adam Jentleson, Reid’s former deputy chief of staff. “Reid did not make a big decision without consulting Faiz. There’s no one he trusted more on how the progressive community would react on something and no one whose advice he took more seriously on pushing him to the left.
“Faiz’s mission in life is to move all of Washington, D.C., to the left, and he’s really done a tremendous amount already to accomplish it.”
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign manager, will remain as Sanders’ senior adviser.
Sanders received his first major endorsements on Tuesday from fellow Vermont lawmakers Sen. Pat Leahy and Rep. Pete Welch.
“I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first,” said Sanders, “and what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — our belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics and town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country.”
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