Bernie Sanders
| Bernie Sanders | |
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United States Senator from Vermont |
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Assumed office January 3, 2007 Serving with Patrick Leahy |
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| Preceded by | Jim Jeffords |
| Chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee | |
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In office January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2015 |
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| Preceded by | Patty Murray |
| Succeeded by | Johnny Isakson |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont's at-large district |
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In office January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2007 |
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| Preceded by | Peter Plympton Smith |
| Succeeded by | Peter Welch |
| 37th Mayor of Burlington | |
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In office April 6, 1981 – April 4, 1989 |
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| Preceded by | Gordon Paquette |
| Succeeded by | Peter Clavelle |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Bernard Sanders September 8, 1941 New York City |
| Political party | Independent (1979–2015; 2016–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Liberty Union (before 1979) Democratic (2015–2016)† |
| Spouse(s) |
Deborah Shiling (m. 1964; div. 1966) Jane O'Meara (m. 1988) |
| Children | 1 son 3 stepchildren |
| Relatives | Larry Sanders (brother) |
| Education |
Brooklyn College University of Chicago (BA) |
| Signature |  |
| Website |
Senate website Campaign website |
Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has been the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest serving independent in U.S. congressional history. Since his election to the House of Representatives in 1991, he has caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to congressional committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously been chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years. Sanders' campaign against Hillary Clinton for the party's 2016 U.S. presidential nomination raised more money in small, individual contributions than any other in American history, and helped him rise to international recognition. A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders is pro-labor and emphasizes reversing economic inequality. Many scholars consider his views to be more in line with social democracy and New Deal-era American progressivism than democratic socialism.
Sanders was born and raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student he was an active African-American Civil Rights Movement 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, by a margin of ten votes. He went on to be reelected as mayor three times. In 1990 he was elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 1991. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012, he was re-elected with 71% of the popular vote. Polls indicate that he is among the senators most popular with their constituents, ranking third in 2014 and first in both 2015 and 2016. In the 2016 general election, Sanders received nearly six percent of Vermont's popular vote for president as a write-in candidate, despite having dropped out of the race and endorsed Clinton months earlier.
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Wikipedia