Bernie Sanders Visits Springfield, Barely Mentions Opponent

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders became the first candidate to visit an Oregon city outside of Portland this campaign season when he gave a speech in Island Park in Springfield.

"When this campaign started, we had no money, we had no name recognition outside of vermont and were considered a fringe campaign by all the experts," he told the crowd. "We were taking on the entire Democratic establishment and the most powerful powerful political organization in the county.

"A lot has happened in a year."

Sanders, speaking to a crowd of around 5,000, touched upon many of his usual themes - Wall Street is bad, drug companies are bad, Republicans are bad, young voters are good, too many people live in poverty, the minimum wage needs to be raised.

"America is not supposed to be about the top tenth of one percent owning as much as the bottom 90 percent," he said to great applause.

"We need a living minimum wage," he said, also to great applause.

"We need automatic voter registration," he said, once more, to great applause. "We need to bring more people into the system."

Sanders barely mentioned his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

In his hour-long speech, Sanders brought her up three times. The first time, 25 minutes in, to say she supported trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that he opposed.

Then a few minutes later he asked her to join him in opposing fracking.

Lastly, at 50 minutes he in, he accused Clinton of believing that Americans don't have the courage to take on the insurance companies and drug companies, which does not appear to be a statement she has ever made.

In an interesting moment, Sanders brought up a piece of information that he conceded might not be true.

"I don't know if this is true," he said during a segment on drug addiction in the country.

He then told the audience that he had heard ten percent of the city of Baltimore are addicts - tens of thousands of people.

Ten percent of the popular of Baltimore would be about 65,000 people.

There have been estimates that there are as many 60,000 addicts in the city but that number has generally been debunked.

Sanders also had praise for Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the only member of the Senate to endorse him.

It's been a tough week for Sanders.

On Tuesday, he lost four out of five races to Clinton.

On Wednesday, his campaign announced they would be laying off hundreds of workers.