U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has yet to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, but he told supporters at a Bangor event on Saturday evening that the country needs to join together to defeat former President Donald Trump in November.
Sanders, who represents Vermont as an independent but sought the Democratic presidential nomination as an insurgent candidate in 2016 and 2020, remains one of the most popular figures among the American left. He easily won the caucuses here eight years ago and narrowly lost a primary to President Joe Biden four years later.
On Friday, he was in New Hampshire before a Saturday rally in Portland and the smaller event at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. It is his first round of events since Biden left the presidential race last Sunday and effectively handed his campaign over to Harris. Sanders has not yet formally endorsed her even though he has pledged to work to elect her.
Sanders didn’t address Harris in his hour-long speech to more than 200 people in Bangor. The ballroom was abuzz with excitement as he approached the podium and began by emphasizing the importance of defeating Trump in November.
“We’re all in this together,” Sanders said in the start of his speech, sending the crowd into an eruption of applause.
In his speech, Sanders addressed several contentious issues facing the country, including rising health care costs, wealth inequality, cuts to Social Security and climate change.
“When we stand together,” Sanders said in his closing comments, “and we don’t allow demagogues to divide us by the color of our skin, by where we were born or our sexual orientation, when we stand together as Americans, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”
When asked if he would endorse Harris in an interview with the Bangor Daily News before the Saturday event in Bangor, Sanders said, “I am here. I was in Portland earlier today. I’m doing everything I can to see that Donald Trump is defeated and Kamala Harris is elected our next president. I’ve been working pretty hard to make that happen.”
Sanders said in the interview that Harris has to focus on the growing income and wealth inequality to win in November and “make it clear to working people that she’s prepared to support legislation to protect their needs.”
Sanders ran an often-bitter 2016 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump later that year. But he quickly embraced Biden after he locked down the nomination four years ago, helping the president expand his coalition among younger and very liberal Democrats.
The two still have big disagreements, most notably around Israel’s war against Hamas following the terror group’s deadly Oct. 7 attacks along Israel’s border with Gaza. Sanders warned in May that the deepening crisis in Gaza could be Biden’s “Vietnam.”
Yet the Vermont senator has stuck with Biden, calling Trump dangerous. He may be one of Harris’ most well-known surrogates during an election roiled in the past month by the attempted assassination of the former president at a Pennsylvania rally, Biden’s exit due to age concerns and Harris’ quick move to effectively lock down the Democratic nomination in his place.
Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. Trump has used that terminology to link Harris to him over the past month. As a California senator from 2017 to 2021, Harris fell to the left of Sanders on economic issues as one of the most progressive people in the chamber, according to ratings from VoteView.
“I don’t think Kamala Harris, California socialism is going to go down well with the people of Doral, the people of Miami or the people of Florida, because in Florida, we don’t like socialism,” Trump said at a Florida rally earlier this month.
During the first week of her campaign, Harris has previewed her campaign by talking often about abortion rights, Trump’s criminal convictions in New York, gun control and voting rights. In her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign, she supported banning fracking, a position that she quickly reversed after taking over Biden’s flagging campaign.
Attendee Daniel Worthington, 49, of Dexter, said he would vote for a broken toaster over Trump.
“I’m very keen on Harris’s support of the troops, especially the mental health of the troops, that she’s done so far. I do feel like she is interested in taking care of people,” he said.
That’s something Sanders and Harris have in common, Worthington noted.
“He stood up for people since before it was popular,” Worthington said. “Now, people are getting on board and saying, ‘Yeah, that does help people to help everyone.’ He viewed it that way long before it was popular to do so.”
“I would vote for Sanders if he was running, but I do see [Harris] as a better option than Trump,” said Newburgh resident Caitlin Funt, 36, who works in higher education. “I hope to see more support for the Palestinian people from her.”
Funt also hopes to see more progressive policies, greater support for working people and protecting the environment, namely opposing fracking and drilling for oil.
“I wasn’t going to vote for Biden,” Funt said, “but I do believe I will be voting for Harris.”
