Bernie Sanders

Born into a working-class Jewish family and raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, Sanders attended Brooklyn College before graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was a protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the civil rights movement. After settling in Vermont in 1968, he ran unsuccessful third-party political campaigns in the early to mid-1970s. He was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981 as an independent and was reelected three times. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, representing Vermont's at-large congressional district, later co-founding the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He was a U.S. representative for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, notably becoming the first non-Republican elected to Vermont's Class 1 seat since Whig Solomon Foot was elected in 1850.


Sanders was reelected to the Senate in 2012 and 2018. He chaired the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee from 2013 to 2015 and the Senate Budget Committee from 2021 to 2023. In January 2023, he became chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the senior senator and dean of the Vermont congressional delegation upon Leahy's retirement from the Senate.


Sanders was a major candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, receiving the second most votes in each. Despite initially low expectations, his 2016 campaign generated significant grassroots enthusiasm and funding from small-dollar donors, carrying him to victory against eventual nominee Hillary Clinton in 23 primaries and caucuses before he conceded in July.^[1] In 2020, his strong showing in early primaries and caucuses made him the front-runner in a historically large field of Democratic candidates. In April 2020, Sanders conceded the nomination to Joe Biden, who had won a series of decisive victories as the field narrowed. He supported both Clinton and Biden in their respective general election campaigns against Donald Trump. He has since emerged as a close ally of Biden.^[2][3]


Sanders is credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party after his 2016 presidential campaign. An advocate of progressive policies, he is known for his opposition to economic inequality and neoliberalism, and support for workers' self-management. On domestic policy, he supports labor rights, universal and single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, tuition-free tertiary education, an ambitious Green New Deal to create jobs addressing climate change, and worker control of production through cooperatives, unions, and democratic public enterprises. On foreign policy, he supports reducing military spending, pursuing more diplomacy and international cooperation, and putting greater emphasis on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements. Sanders supports workplace democracy, and has praised elements of the Nordic model. Some have compared and contrasted^[4] his politics to left-wing populism and the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Party affiliations

Born into a Democratic-voting family, Sanders was first introduced to political activism when his brother Larry joined the Young Democrats of America and campaigned for Adlai Stevenson II in 1956.^[435] Sanders joined Vermont's Liberty Union Party in 1971 and was a candidate for several offices, never coming close to winning election. He became party chairman,^[436] but quit in 1977 to become an independent.^[437] In 1980, he served as an elector for the Socialist Workers Party.^[438][439] In 1981, Sanders ran as an independent for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and defeated the Democratic incumbent; he was reelected three times.^[74] Although an independent, he endorsed Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Jesse Jackson in 1988. His endorsement of Mondale was lukewarm (telling reporters that "if you go around saying that Mondale would be a great president, you would be a liar and a hypocrite"), but he supported Jackson enthusiastically.^[440] The Washington Post reported that the Jackson campaign helped inspire Sanders to work more closely with the Democratic Party.^[440][2]


Sanders attended the 1983 conference of the Socialist Party USA where he gave a speech.^[441]


Sanders first ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988 and for the U.S. Senate in 2006, each time adopting a strategy of winning the Democratic Party primary, thereby eliminating Democratic challengers, and then running as an independent in the general election.^[442] He continued this strategy through his reelection in the 2018 United States Senate election in Vermont.^[443] Throughout his tenure in Congress, he has been listed as an independent. He caucused with Democrats in the House^[14] while refusing to join the party,^[96] and continues to caucus with Democrats in the Senate.^[193] Some conservative southern House Democrats initially barred him from the caucus as they believed that allowing a self-described socialist to join would harm their electoral prospects.^[2] He soon came to work constructively with Democrats, voting with the party over 90% of the time during his tenure in Congress.^[2]


Starting with his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders's announcements suggested that not only was he running as a Democrat, but that he would run as a Democrat in future elections.^{[444][445][446]} When challenged by Clinton about his party commitment, he said, "Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination."^[447] Since he remained a senator elected as an independent, his U.S. Senate website and press materials continued to refer to him as an independent during the campaign and upon his return to the Senate.^[448][449] In October 2017, Sanders said he would run for reelection as an independent in 2018 despite pressure to run as a Democrat.^[450] His party status became ambiguous again in March 2019 when he signed a formal "loyalty pledge" to the Democratic Party stating that he was a member of the party and would serve as a Democrat if elected president. He signed the pledge the day after he signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to the Senate in 2024.^[283]


After Trump's victory in the 2016 elections, Sanders suggested the Democratic Party undergo a series of reforms and that it "break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor."^[451] He drew parallels between his campaign and that of the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election.^[452][453] He wrote in The New York Times that "the British elections should be a lesson for the Democratic Party" and urged the Democrats to stop holding on to an "overly cautious, centrist ideology", arguing that "momentum shifted to Labour after it released a very progressive manifesto that generated much enthusiasm among young people and workers."^[454][455] He had earlier praised Jeremy Corbyn's stance on class issues.^[456] Sanders is one of three independents in the Senate, the others being Angus King, who also caucuses with the Democrats, and Kyrsten Sinema.^[457]