At HRC-Controlled Flint Debate: DNC/DWS Threatens to eject Michigan Mayor for Feeling the Bern [View all]

[99th_Monkey]

FLINT, Michigan — After expressing vocal support for Bernie Sanders during Sunday night’s debate, the independent mayor of Michigan’s third largest city says security warned him that he would be booted from Sunday’s Democratic debate here if he did not quiet down.

Jim Fouts, the three-term independent mayor of Warren, told BuzzFeed News Monday that he attended both the Republican and Democratic debates in Michigan over the past week. The audience at the GOP debate at the Fox theater in Detroit Thursday was loud. But the mood in the Whiting Auditorium on the campus of the Flint Cultural Center, where Sanders and Hillary Clinton met in one of their sharpest-elbowed debates to date, was very different, he said.

“The Democratic debate is totally controlled by Hillarys [sic] good friend DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” Fouts wrote on Facebook Monday. “No commentary is allowed by the audience. Particularly if you are cheering Bernie Sanders. Persons who do not adhere to Hillarys [sic] rules are threatened with expulsion.” ...

At the debate, Fouts sat in the center section of the hall, directly behind Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair. Next to him was his longtime executive assistant. Fouts told BuzzFeed News that at multiple times during the beginning if the debate, he turned to his executive assistant, praised Sanders’ performance and said the Flint debate — added to the calendar after the initial set were announced — proved that more debates were a good idea.

“I was just saying ‘great job, Bernie!’ and ‘we need more debates,’” Fouts said. He said that at one point he vocally criticized Clinton for “wrapping herself around Obama.” He insisted he was speaking at a “normal conversation” level. Staff for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia who were sitting near Wasserman Schultz and Fouts said he was being “very disruptive” and made it hard to hear the candidates.

Wasserman Schultz did not respond to a request for comment.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/michigan-mayor-security-threatened-to-kick-me-out-of-debate?utm_term=.in3Nl8Jwnk&bftw=pol#.fqjlk2rvRK