DES MOINES, Iowa — Before the crowd gathered around a small platform outside the “civic engagement tent” at the Iowa Latino Heritage Festival on Saturday heard from the man they came to see, they had to hear a few words from the pope.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent currently running second in the Democratic presidential race, opened his remarks by reading a verbatim Pope Francis quote from a folded piece of yellow legal pad paper he pulled from his back pocket. (Sanders is known to write his own speeches longhand on yellow legal pads.)
“The other day I was in the White House and then later on in the halls of Congress listening to Pope Francis," were the first words out of Sanders’ mouth in Des Moines. "The remarks that he made, moved me very much and I think that there are words that he gave us that we should heed."
Then came the reading.
“Let me just mention what he said a few weeks ago. He appealed to the world’s leaders to 'seek a new economic model to help the poor and to shun policies that sacrifice human life on the altar of money and profit.’ That’s Pope Francis,” Sanders said. “And essentially what he is saying in so many words is there is something very wrong in this world, and I am saying in this country, when so few have so much and so many have so little.”
The pope has long been a staple of Sanders stump speeches. Francis, with his focus on economic inequality, has fired up many corners of the American left — none more so than the corner where Sanders sits. There seemed no politician in Washington more excited to see the pope in person than Sanders was last week, and there was no candidate who mentioned Francis more on the presidential stump before his visit to the U.S. than Sanders had. When Sanders boldly went to Liberty University to argue to evangelicals that Christian doctrine requires a focus on the economic justice he advocates, Sanders referred more than once to Francis.
The pope’s speech to Congress, with its celebration of radical economic leftist Dorothy Day, dialed the Sanders love for the Francis up to 11. A beaming Sanders celebrated the speech in interviews moments after it ended. His Senate office ran a day-long campaign to tie the pope and the senator together, posting a tweet at 9 a.m. Thursday that linked to “10 Times Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Sounded Alike." His presidential campaign fired off a fundraising email at the end of the day signed by Sanders that urged supporters to give because, like Sanders, Francis is "is asking us to create a new society where the economy works for all, and not just the wealthy and the powerful."
The next step came In Iowa Saturday, when the pope became a kind of Sanders campaign mascot. And, possibly, his introduction to the Latino electorate — with whom Sanders has struggled with low name I.D. and polling that shows him well behind the Democratic frontrunner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
At back-to-back stops, Sanders opened his remarks by talking about meeting the pope and celebrating his economic message. In Des Moines, at the Latino Heritage Festival, his speech was almost more about the pope than it was about anything else. Sanders brought up Francis more than once in a 13-minute version of his usually hour-long stump speech that put front and center support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and condemning the “racism and demagoguery” that he said characterizes GOP rhetoric on immigration.
The Sanders crowd at the Latino Heritage Festival numbered around 100, and, as most Iowa political crowds are, it was overwhelmingly white. But there was more diversity than is usually found at a Sanders Iowa event. Watching the 74-year-old Sanders talk about the pope and his message were two of the young Latino voters Democrats are desperate to bring into the fold. They were both impressed with Sanders’ speech and said pointing out political agreements with the pope was the right strategy for finding Latino votes.
“Most of us, I’d say the majority are Catholic or Christian,” Natalia Tinoco, a 19-year-old native of Colombia and sophomore at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, told BuzzFeed News. She said she plans to vote for the first next fall and is undecided about who to support.
Francis was a good way to win Latino votes, Tinoco said. “I feel it’s a good connection, she said. “It got my attention.”
Standing next to her, in a UNI Hispanic Latino Student Union t-shirt, was fellow sophomore Andrew Jessip, native of Sioux Falls. He said he will caucus in February for the Democrats but is undecided about which candidate he’ll end up supporting. Sanders appearance at the Latino Heritage Festival and his Latino-focused speech there resonated with Jessip though he explained watching candidates try to win Latino votes can sometimes be frustrating.
“I don’t think that there’s some umbrella over everybody. It’s easy to say you need to reach out to the Latino community but what does that mean? There’s so much diversity within the Latino community. You have documented citizens, you have undocumented citizens,” he said. "But if you’re going for a young Latino vote, I think what Sanders did was really big. He touched on immigration, incarceration, and education.”
He agreed with Tinoco, however, that the more Pope Francis in Sanders outreach campaign, the better.
“I think a lot of people are connecting with this pope regardless of their religion,” he said. "I think this pope is a groundbreaking pope in a lot of his views."
Sanders's affinity for talking about the pope, though, is universal. At a town hall meeting in Newton, Iowa — to a crowd that lacked even the diversity of the earlier event — Sanders again opened his remarks by talking about the pope and meeting him in Washington.
A top aide to Sanders said that Sanders’ Francis focus could help win Latino support, but noted that Sanders talks about the pope constantly and has been doing it for months.
“He thinks the pope is a tremendous leader whose importance goes beyond the Catholic Church,” said Michael Briggs, Sanders's communications strategist. "He’s talking about issues that Bernie thinks are important, from income inequality to climate change. I’ve heard him say, and you probably have too, ‘You think I’m radical?'"