Sanders Campaign Press Release - Sanders' Odds in Nevada Looking Up

LAS VEGAS – Liking his chances here, Bernie Sanders returned to Nevada on Thursday saying that he thinks the outcome of Saturday's caucuses will be "very close."

Said Sanders: "We're working very hard to get a large voter turnout and if we do I feel confident we can win."

The first western state contest in the Democratic presidential nominating process comes after Sanders' victory over Hillary Clinton on Feb. 9 in New Hampshire and a come-from-behind virtual tie with the one-time Democratic Party front-runner on Feb. 1 in Iowa.

"Our campaign has the momentum," Sanders told reporters during a cross-country flight to Las Vegas. "The American people are catching on," that the "real issues facing this country" are a corrupt campaign finance system, a broken criminal justice system and a rigged economy.

"No state more than Nevada understands the impact of Wall Street's greed and illegal behavior. Thousands of Nevadans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings," the U.S. senator said

Sanders, who helped lead the effort against the deregulation of Wall Street before the recession, wants to reinstate the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banks. He also has called for breaking up the biggest banks on Wall Street that hold a grip on credit cards and home mortgage lending.

Unlike Clinton, whose super PAC has collected millions of dollars from Wall Street, Sanders does not have a super PAC and his campaign has been funded by more than 3.7 million individual contributions recently averaging about $27 apiece.

Sanders enjoys especially strong support in Nevada and elsewhere among working families and young people, including growing numbers of Latinos and African-Americans. "This is the future of the Democratic Party," he said.

Earlier Thursday, Sanders met in Washington, D.C., with leaders of nine of the nation's major civil rights organizations. His campaign dismissed attacks by Clinton campaign surrogates on his record. "Clearly, the Clinton campaign, once anointed by the establishment as the inevitable winner of the Democratic nomination, is now getting very nervous and is making increasingly reckless attacks," said spokesman Michael Briggs.