Walter Scott Lawyer Jumps to Sanders in Critical SC

Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina lawmaker and lawyer for the family of Walter Scott, the man gunned down by a North Charleston cop, made a surprise political announcement Monday: He's taking back his endorsement of Hillary Clinton and throwing it Bernie Sanders' way instead, the New York Times reports. "The question to ask is not what Secretary Clinton did to lose it, but what Sen. Sanders did to gain it," Bamberg said in a conference call, per CNN, adding that "as is the case for many Americans, [I] did not give Sen. Sanders as a candidate his fair share [of attention]." More specifically, per the Times: Bamberg believes Clinton represents the "establishment," while Sanders is "bold."

"Clinton is more a representation of the status quo when I think about politics or about what it means to be a Democrat," while "Bernie … doesn't think like everyone else. He is not afraid to call things as they are," he tells the paper. CNN notes that this endorsement "comes at a critical moment" for Sanders, who's trying to steal away as many black voters from South Carolina—what Clinton's camp has called a "firewall" state—from under the Clinton umbrella as possible. "What I got from him was not a presidential candidate talking to a state representative, or an old white man talking to a young black guy," Bamberg tells the Times about his meeting with Sanders last week. "What I got from him was a man talking to a man about things that they are passionate about, and that was the tipping point for me." (More Election 2016 stories.)