Who Is Bernie Sanders?

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• published: 03 Jul 2015
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Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He has announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. A self-described democratic socialist, he favors policy proposals similar to those of mainstream social democratic governments in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia. He caucuses with the Democratic Party and has been the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee since January 2015. After unsuccessful candidacies for Vermont's governor and U.S. senator, Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's most populous city, in 1981. He was reelected to three more two-year mayoral terms before being elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the United States House of Representatives in 1990. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to succeed the retiring Republican-turned-independent Jim Jeffords in the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012, he was re-elected by a large margin, capturing almost 71% of the popular vote. Since his election to the Senate, Sanders has emerged as a leading progressive voice on issues like income inequality, climate change, and campaign finance reform. He rose to national prominence on the heels of his 2010 of the proposed extension of the Bush-era tax rates for the wealthy. Sanders is also outspoken on civil liberties issues, and has been particularly critical of mass surveillance policies such as the Patriot Act. Sanders announced his intentions to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for President on April 30, 2015, in an address on the Capitol lawn. His campaign was officially launched on May 26 in Burlington. Unlike the other presidential candidates, Sanders will not pursue funding through a Super PAC, instead focusing on small individual donations. His campaign events have been drawing "overflow crowds" around the country. On July 1, 2015, Sanders' visit to Madison, Wisconsin made history when he drew the largest crowd of any 2016 Presidential candidate, an estimated turnout of 10,000. According to a June 25 poll, Sanders is running in a "dead heat" with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Bernie Sanders was born on September 8, 1941 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, to Eli and Dorothy (Glassburg) Sanders. His father immigrated to the United States from Poland, and much of his family was killed in the Holocaust. His mother was born in New York to Jewish immigrant parents. Sanders attended elementary school at P.S. 197, where he won a state championship on the basketball team. He attended Hebrew school in the afternoons and had his bar mitzvah in 1954. Sanders then attended James Madison High School, where he lost his first election, finishing last out of three for the student body presidency. Sanders's mother died in June 1959 at the age of 46 shortly after Sanders graduated from high school. Sanders went to Brooklyn College for a year before transferring to the University of Chicago. While there, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement, and a student organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. One of the actions he took was the coordination of sit-in protests against segregated campus housing. Sanders also participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor of arts degree in political science in 1964. After graduating, Sanders spent several months on an Israeli kibbutz, and he moved to Vermont in 1968. In an interview with The Nation on March 6, 2014, Sanders stated that he was "prepared to run for President of the United States" in 2016 but did not officially announce a campaign. On April 28, 2015, Vermont Public Radio reported that Sanders would announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 30. The official announcement came on May 26 in Burlington, Vermont.