Bernie Sanders has been in town this week, and he’s, to coin a phrase, a breath of fresh air. This is a man who seems never to hesitate to say and do exactly what he thinks is right, and it’s only been good for him. He was once the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and for years he’s been the sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives from that small state. His biggest claim to fame is that he’s an independent, not a Democrat, in a state where Democrats and Republicans have traded off in political jobs most of the time. Now he’s running to replace retiring independent (formerly Republican) Senator James Jefferds, against someone he describes as “the richest person in Vermont,” a real Republican candidate who’s expected to spend as much as he wants of his own considerable fortune to beat Bernie. The Sanders camp thinks that they can hold their own, in a state where only about 600,000 souls live with three or four hundred thousand voting, for about $5 million. That’s a big number, but nothing like as big as expenditures in more populous states like California, where the war chest for a senate race is more like $15 million. So Bernie is touring the country unabashedly trying to raise what he needs to win, and judging by the enthusiasm with which he was received at the Berkeley function I attended, he’s well on his way. Turns out a lot of people still admire a person who speaks his mind.
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