Vermont

Vermont (ⁱ/vərˈmɒnt/ or /vɜːrˈmɒnt/,locally: [vɚˈmɑ̟̃(ʔ)]) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern part of the United States. It is bordered to the west by New York, the south by Massachusetts, the east by New Hampshire and to the north by the Canadian province of Quebec. Vermont is the 6th smallest in area and the 2nd least populous of the 50 United States. It is the least populous of the six New England states and the only one not bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Champlain covers half of Vermont's western border, while the Connecticut River forms most of Vermont's eastern boundary with New Hampshire. The Green Mountains run north-south the length of the state.

With a population of 7,671, the state capital of Montpelier is the least populous state capital in the US. Vermont's most populous city is Burlington. With a 2013 population of 42,284, Burlington is the least populous city in the United States to be the largest city within a state. Burlington's metropolitan area has a population of 214,796. Vermont is one of the most racially homogeneous states; 94.3% of its population identified as non-Hispanic white in 2010.

Peter Shumlin

Peter Elliott Shumlin (born March 24, 1956) is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who serves as the 81st and current Governor of Vermont and has served as chair of the Democratic Governors Association since December 2012. First elected Governor in 2010, he was re-elected by a large margin in 2012. In 2014 he received a narrow plurality in his race for re-election, but did not attain the 50 percent threshold required by the Vermont Constitution, requiring the Vermont General Assembly to select the winner in January 2015. He was subsequently re-elected to a third term by the legislature by a vote of 110-69. On June 8, 2015, Shumlin announced that he will not seek re-election in 2016.

He previously served in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1990 to 1993 and represented the Windham District in the Vermont Senate from 1993 to 2003 and 2007 to 2011. He was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont in 2002.

Personal life, education and career

Bernie Sanders

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A Democrat as of 2015, Sanders had been the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, though his caucusing with the Democrats entitled him to committee assignments and at times gave Democrats a majority. Sanders has been the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee since January 2015, and previously served for two years as chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Sanders was born and raised in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was an active civil rights protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After settling in Vermont in 1968, Sanders ran unsuccessful third-party campaigns for governor and U.S. senator in the early to mid-1970s. As an independent, he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's most populous city, in 1981, and was reelected three times. In 1990, he was elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1991, Sanders co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012, he was reelected with 71% of the popular vote. During the 2016 presidential primaries, Sanders became the first self-described democratic socialist and first Jewish American to win a presidential primary of a major party, namely the New Hampshire primary.