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Bill Shettle/ZUMA
A day after losing to Hillary Clinton in four of five primaries in the Northeast, Bernie Sanders announced his campaign will soon start laying off “hundreds” of its staff members, the New York Times reports.
“We have had a very large staff, which was designed to deal with 50 states in this country,” Sanders said in an interview with the Times. “Forty of the states are now behind us. So we have a great staff, great people.”
The cuts to his staff, however, do not signal he is planning to bow out of the race anytime soon, the Vermont senator said. Instead, Sanders maintained he would remain in the race for the Democratic nomination at least until the end of the summer, and he hopes to rehire laid-off staff members eventually.
Five people familiar with the cuts also confirmed the news to Politico, hinting that Sanders was preparing to shift gears and potentially focus the rest of his campaign on influencing Clinton’s platform.