MANCHESTER, N.H. — Seeking to quell a burgeoning controversy, Bernie Sanders apologized to Hillary Clinton and his own supporters Saturday night for a data breach that allowed his campaign to access her team’s valuable information about voters.
“This is not the type of campaign that we run,” Sanders said in the opening moments of the third Democratic debate. Still, he slammed the Democratic National Committee for briefly cutting off his campaign’s access to its own voter files, calling it an “egregious act.”
Clinton quickly accepted the apology from Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is her closest rival in the Democratic race.
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“We should move on because I don’t think the American people are interested in this,” said Clinton, the former secretary of state.
Indeed, the debate moved quickly to national security, as the candidates tackled questions on terrorism in the wake of the attack in San Bernardino, California. The shootings, as well as earlier attacks in Paris, pushed national security to the forefront of the 2016 White House race.
Still, the data breach appeared likely to overshadow the candidates’ policy discussions in some voters’ minds. The incident sparked fierce reactions from Sanders and Clinton staffers, a sharp shift from what until now had been a relatively civil Democratic primary.
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