Bernie Sanders Running for President, Competing Against Hillary Clinton for Democratic Nomination
VERMONT – April 30, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has thrown his hat in the ring for the 2016 presidential election.
Sen. Sanders announced in an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, April 30, that he is running as a Democrat.
The longtime Independent politician is focusing on income inequality, campaign finance reform, and wider access to higher education as he readies his campaign.
Sen. Sanders, according to his website, has been pushing for higher taxes on the rich and more money for programs serving the middle class and poor. He has long supported creating a public health care system similar to Canada’s and Britain’s. He favors equal pay for women, a higher minimum wage and stronger labor rights. He has backed legislation to crack down on offshore tax havens, provide more youth jobs, expand Social Security and increase the estate tax. He supports a five-year, $1 trillion plan to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure. He says that would create 13 million jobs, AP reported.
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“He’s staked out numerous positions over the years that are considerably more progressive than those embraced by more mainstream Democrats,” according to CBS News. Sanders “has advocated for increases to Medicare and Social Security benefits and pushed for ending tax cuts for the wealthy,” ABC News reported. “The likely effect – and intent – of a Sanders challenge is to push both Clinton’s campaign and her administration, if there is one, further left, thus consolidating liberal control of the party,” Charles Lane wrote for The Washington Post.
Sanders is serving his second term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote. His previous 16 years in the House of Representatives make him the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, Sanders attended James Madison High School, Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago. After graduating in 1964, he moved to Vermont. In 1981, he was elected (by 10 votes) to the first of four terms as mayor of Burlington. Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York before his 1990 election as Vermont’s at-large member in Congress.
