Bernie Sanders is an independent member of the U.S. Senate from Vermont who caucuses with the Democratic Party.
Sanders announced that he was running for president of the United States for a second time on February 19, 2019. He suspended his presidential campaign on April 8, 2020.
Sanders previously ran for the presidency in 2016, coming in second to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
In 2018, Sanders won re-election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat and as an independent. In his 2006 Senate election and his 2012 re-election, he won the Democratic primary and then declined the nomination ahead of the general election so he could appear on the ballot as an independent.
Sanders was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 2007.
Sanders regularly endorses candidates in races across the country. For more information about his endorsements, see this page.
Sanders was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, where he grew up. He earned his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1964 and went on to lecture at Harvard University and Hamilton College in New York. Sanders has also worked as a carpenter and a journalist.
After spending six months in a kibbutz (a communal settlement) in Israel, Sanders moved to Vermont in 1968. In the 1970s, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Vermont twice and for U.S. Senate twice as a Liberty Union Party candidate. He was elected mayor of Burlington as an independent in 1981, defeating Democratic incumbent Gordon Paquette by a margin of 10 votes, and he served as mayor until 1989.
During his mayoral tenure, Sanders ran unsuccessful bids for governor and U.S. House as an independent before being elected to the House in 1990, where he served until joining the U.S. Senate in 2007.
Sanders sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, which he lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He received around 43 percent of the popular vote in the primaries compared to Clinton's 55 percent, and he received support from 39 percent of delegates at the national convention to Clinton's 60 percent.
Though Sanders has held elected office as an independent since 1981 and sought the Democratic nomination for president, he identifies as a democratic socialist.
