Connecticut, pennsylvania, and other States Holding primaries on tuesday. Our guests this morning include Connecticut Governor dan malloy. And the look back at the controversy over the New York Primary. Tens of thousands of voters suddenly finding out they had been dropped from voter rolls. Were gonna talk to new york city controller Scott Stringer, who is leading an investigation. Good morning, everyone. Im bill ritter. Welcome to upclose. The political slugfest for votes remains in the northeast for another weekend. Voters in pennsylvania, maryland, delaware, rhode island, and connecticut going to the polls on tuesday. Bernie sanders promising to push on, even though Hillary Clinton has taken a delegate lead of more than 700, if you include the delegates elected and pledged. Were gonna talk to new York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, one of only three Council Members who supports senator sanders. But we begin this morning with Connecticut Governor dan malloy, who supports secretary clinton. The governor joins us this morning from hartford. Governor, good morning to you. Good morning, bill. Great to be with you. Connecticut primary on tuesday . Mrs. Clinton right now holding, according to the latest poll, a 51 to 42 lead over senator sanders. But theres a lot of wiggle room. 18 said they may change their mind. Well, i think its gonna be close. Certainly, i want all of our clinton voters to get out. Our demographics are a little bit different than new york or the other states that are voting. But i think she is shes got a great closing argument, particularly in my state, where we take gun safety very seriously. After all, we were the state that had to suffer through the Sandy Hook School shooting. And there is a distinct difference between senator sanders and Hillary Clinton on the gun issue. I mean, hes voted against the brady bill five times. Hes voted to give immunity to the whole gun industry, an immunity that doesnt apply to any other industry in the United States. And thats not the most popular position to take in connecticut. Now before our courts brought by the parents of the sandy hook children who lost their lives. And i think that case should be heard. I think its the way we make guns safer. You know, right now, we have the technology to make a gun that cant be fired by a 2 or 3 or 4yearold, and weve had incidences where thats happened in a walmart, where a child found a gun in the moms pocketbook, didnt know what it was, fired a shot, killed her mother. We have the technology that would prevent that from happening. The gun marketplace doesnt offer that, because i think the nra is against anything that makes guns safer because theyre afraid that it will look like theyre caving in. We got to change this law. Let me talk about senator sanders a little bit, because hes not bowing out. He says hes gonna push on to the convention, even though the road to the nomination seems steep and challenging and improbable at best. He needs Something Like 63 of all the delegates that are left in the primary season. Is his campaign hurting mayor de blasio, of new york, last week on this show, told us he thinks its making clinton a stronger candidate. Where do you stand on that . I think it has made her a stronger candidate. Weve had her in connecticut this week, and shes doing a great job in townhallstyle meetings and conversations and the like. I think she is a better candidate. On the other hand, you know, what happened in new york, where this got a little out of hand, in my humble opinion, and the week before, where senator sanders was saying senator clinton or secretary clinton was unqualified. I think that was out of hand or underhand, perhaps. And i would urge both candidates not to do that sort of thing. We dont want to hurt the party. Every democrat that i know wants to see a democratic president. So lets not make it harder to do. Everyone tone it back a little bit, talk about issues, and lets have a good conversation. I believe in issues and i think there is a real difference between the two of these people. I mean, listen, senator sanders couldnt explain what he wanted interview with a newspaper in your town. The daily news, yeah. Thats a substantial weakness. After all, every speech he talks about, hes gonna do something, right . But not knowing how to get it done, not knowing the apparatus, not knowing what you would end up with thats a dangerous situation, particularly in an industry thats so important in connecticut and in new york. Well, to be fair, senator sanders did sort of a pivot, make a big pivot and took back his comments about secretary clinton being unqualified. He took that back. And, in fact, did it on abc in the view. And i think the vitriol there has calmed down. But, in general, governor, this has been a vitriolic campaign, especially for the republicans. Donald trump in your state right now, according to the latest poll, 48 of the votes, in the opinion poll, for your upcoming primary. John kasich with 28 . Ted cruz with 19 . What do you see for the republican primary in your state . I think trumps gonna get 55 . People know him. In connecticut, the Republican Party has a hard time, by itself, electing anybody. But if you, then, look at the Republican Party, along with a percentage of independent voters that they normally get or unaffiliated voters that they normally get thats where we have our real twoparty system. But this is a candidate, in donald trump, who has turned off independent voters or unaffiliated voters to a very great extent, turned off women to a very great extent, turned off our asian population, our hispanic population, our black population. He cant get elected president , i dont believe, but i think hes gonna do very well in the republican primary. What do you think, governor, about the level of vitriol, the level of discourse, the lack of discourse in this campaign . And what do you tell people . What do you tell children who are watching this and thinking, you know, is this what the countrys all about . Parents, dont let your thats what i would say. None of us want our children to grow up using the language to describe other individuals, women, hispanics, black people, asian people no one in america should want their children to watch someone who is clearly discriminatory or prepared to discriminate against people based on their religion. After all, in the United States, thats unconstitutional, and, yet, it is a regular talking point for donald trump. All right. Connecticut governor dan malloy, whose state has a primary this tuesday. Thank you so much for joining us. Your support of Hillary Clinton you made the case for her. And were now gonna get the Sanders Point of view. Governor, thank you. Thank you. And joining us now in the studio is the new York City Council member Jumaane Williams of brooklyn. He endorsed Bernie Sanders a week ago, calling his Campaign Sanders campaign a political revolutionary moon shot. Councilman williams, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. What did you mean by that a political revolutionary moon well, first, i want to Council Member rafael espinal, who was the first councilman to endorse and councilman ritchie torres, who endorsed right after me. I think it was important to say that because we kept hearing about what cant be done and why we shouldnt support. And everything in this country thats been good has actually heard the same thing you cant do it. You cant do this. And we talk about taking a moon shot all the time, to aim high. And so thats what i was referring to. We just have to aim high, as we do with Everything Else in this country that we want to get accomplished. You are only one of three of the 51 city Council Members of new york who have endorsed Bernie Sanders. Everyone else endorsed Hillary Clinton. Sure. You feel like a political minority there . Well, absolutely. It took me a while before i actually endorsed. Whyd you wait so long . Well, there was some issues that i needed clarity on, and i wasnt getting that clarity. And i did get it that weekend. I finally met i had spoken to him on the phone before, Bernie Sanders, and i got to meet with him with the president of brooklyn, eric adams, facetoface, ask him questions. And his answers i liked. And i asked for him to please clarify in public it was around gun control clarify in public what he said to me. And he said he would. And then we toured, with ritchie torres, in brownsville, a nature facility. And i felt more comfortable then. Not exactly what i wanted, but it was more comfortable. And on the demand side of gunviolence, hes been excellent, talking about the root causes of it. And, so, i felt comfortable that this message had to be the message that was pushed forward. Hillary clinton won by a pretty large margin, but Bernie Sanders got 42 of the vote. That is not insignificant. I mean, i was surprised at all of the coverage poohpoohing his performance. And i was excited that night. Of course, you want your candidate to win. I hoped that he would. But in the back of my head, i thought, if he doesnt, my hope is that he cracked 40 . And he did. He actually did better than president obama did a few years back. And, so, i was excited that that message caught fire. I felt that if he caught fire a little sooner, if folks like me had kind of heard some of the little sooner, we would have pushed that up even a little bit more. But his message is still, i think right now, the better message, and it has had the effect of pulling secretary clinton to talk about a lot of issues that probably would not have gotten the same amount of airtime. Very briefly, if you do the math, its hard to argue with the numbers. His path to the nomination seems very, very difficult, if not impossible. Why is he still in the race . Well, one, the most important thing is that its not impossible, although we do agree that its difficult. And, two, as i said, the message is extremely important. I worry about the people who are telling him to drop out. Secretary clinton herself went to the end last time. And, again, that message without his presence being there, were not gonna talk about the issues that we need to talk about. We have 30 seconds left. Quick question if Hillary Clinton, who appears to be headed towards the nomination, gets that nomination, will the sanders supporters support her . Well, i have said that any one of the Democratic Candidates are better than the ones on the republican side, so we all have but my hope is that Bernie Sanders will be that candidate. Okay, representing the sanders campaign, city councilman Jumaane Williams. Thank you, councilman. Thank you. Good to see you. When we come back, from looking at next weeks election to looking at last weeks election. Why were so many thousands of new yorkers unable vote . Because their registrations were improperly dumped. The new york city controller Scott Stringer joins us with his welcome back to upclose. The highoctane campaign in the New York Primary now gone, but a big mess has been left behind. It involves how people voted or didnt vote, in this case in the New York Primary. How did so many tens of thousands of people get turned away . Told they werent even registered, when, in fact, they were registered. Several investigations now under way. So, what really went wrong . New York City ComptrollerScott Stringer joins us. He is leading one of those investigations. Welcome, mr. Stringer. Good to be here. So, tell me is this a clerical error, ineptitude, scandal . Somewhere in between . You dont know . Well, thats the purpose of our audit and investigation to make sure that we finally find out what went wrong on this primary day. This is not the first time weve had these issues with the board of elections. Our democracy depends on a system that allows people to vote. Voting should not be a chore. Hoops and hurdles. And it seems that, year after year, the situation at the board of elections is just getting worse and worse. So im gonna take a hard look. Were gonna spend time at the board, looking at the problems, assessing where we have to do better. We have an election coming up this november where we are expecting huge turnout. And i think new yorkers have had enough. They want to know why 125,000 people were purged from the rolls. They want to know why polling places didnt open on time, why they are told to go to certain locations. The board of elections sent out a mailing telling people the wrong date of the primary. Mmhmm. So, this has got to stop. Any evidence that one candidate, in any party, was, you know, disproportionately affected by this . Well, were not looking at doing a recount. Were looking at the management and operations of the board of elections. But, look, a lot of people who are for Bernie Sanders feel burned by this process. A woman came up to me on the street and said, look, my daughter in college wanted an she wanted to cast her vote for Hillary Clinton. And that ballot never came. So, my sense is that everybodys impacted democrats, republicans, hillary people, bernie people. But we have to get to the bottom of the operations of the board of elections. The board were all learning a lot about the board, which, i guess, you knew. But a lot of new yorkers did not understand. This is not its sort of an elected job, the board of election officers, but not elected by the people. Elected by the parties, right . Well, the party bosses run the board of elections. You have republicans and democrats. They split up the jobs. They split everything up. Not civilservice jobs. No, these are real political appointees. Now, we have to look at why these political appointees cant seem to run an election, and thats something were gonna look at. And we should really look to professionalize the voting in new york. We should institute some legislative reforms. We need sameday Voter Registration so people can get excited about an election, go to a polling place, and say, i want to vote for the first time. Everyone who works there i know that a lot of people work hard at this. But it sound a little like the old chicago daley school, you know, the original mayor daley, where the bosses were in charge. Why doesnt the city run this . Well, its time for us to have a discussion about how to professionalize, modernize the electoral system, and that starts with creating a structure at the board that is not from the old days but is more 21st century, more thinking about the future of our political process and voting. Our democracy depends on a strong electoral system that is never called into question. And when you think about what went on on primary day, in a National Election that had so much importance we probably picked the next president of the United States last week during these primaries. And we should make sure that this system has integrity. And im gonna get to the bottom of this. Were gonna use the power of our audit and investigation to go in and root out what these problems will your investigation, mr. Stringer, include suggestions, recommendations, proposals to broaden out the registration system, make it sameday registration, or at least not make it six months before the primary, allow independents to somehow get involved with it. Theres been a lot of calls for that. Is that part of your charge . A week or two ago, issued a 16point plan with Good Government groups and progressive elected officials, demanding legislative action on a number of proposals to make voting easier and more inclusive sameday Voter Registration, as i mentioned, early voting so that people have more time to plan out how they can get to the polls, if you have kids or you have to work a job. We talked about having a system that made it easier for people to engage in the process. And that was before primary day. So i believe very strongly that every elected official has to go to albany and say, look, lets make the voting easier. Let me tell you something that i we had a primary, right . We now have a june election for congress. Right. Were now gonna have a september election for state offices and a november election. At the very least, we should combine the june and september primaries, but politics in albany wont allow that to happen. The republicans dont want an early june primary. So, let me tell you you know what that cost taxpayers . How much . 50 million. See . So thats a 50 million. Well, and i think the taxpayers would be ready to move on that and take action, at least demand some action on that, cause thats a lot of money. Imagine what 50 million can do if we then rededicated that money for technology and making it easier to make voting more accessible. Will this be done we dont have much time left, mr. Stringer, but will this be done in time, do you think, some of these reforms . The audit wont be completed by november, so that should not be an excuse not to act. Theres a lot that we can do before the november election to ensure better participation. Will you keep us posted . Absolutely. Im sure you will, but come back again. Good to see you. All right, thanks, mr. Stringer. Scott stringer, the comptroller of new york city. Just ahead on upclose, talk well explain what that means. And some of the most famous and richest people in new york have at the four seasons grill room. A nostalgic look back com