Senator Bernie Sanders has endorsed more than five dozen candidates for local and state offices nationwide as he seeks to remake the Democratic Party in his image and build a progressive bench as part of his legacy.
Mr. Sanders said in an interview that at 84, his days as one of the defining faces of progressivism in America are numbered, so he is working to help elect as many like-minded allies as possible up and down the ballot, from county commissions to the Senate.
“By the time I’m 104 and serving my 8th term in the U.S. Senate — that’s a joke,” Mr. Sanders said, pausing for effect. “Yes of course, we’re building a movement for the future.”
Mr. Sanders has run for president in the last two open Democratic primaries, in 2016 and 2020, and twice finished as the runner-up. Yet even in defeat, the Vermont independent emerged as one of the country’s leading voices on the left. Now, he is asserting that power in the 2026 elections.
His endorsement list this year includes the most state and local selections since he issued a similar list in 2020. It reflects a heightened desire to wield more influence in primary elections; his last such effort came in October, far after primary elections had ended. And the range is wide: He is backing candidates in 20 states, focused heavily on those running for state legislatures.
Mr. Sanders had already announced his support for a trio of Senate candidates — Graham Platner in Maine, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota — who have been at least initially opposed by the more moderate wing of the party. Mr. Platner’s leading rival, Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out, making him the presumptive nominee.
Mr. Sanders said it was critical for progressives to gain power this year — both from Republicans allied with President Trump and from establishment leaders of the Democratic Party.
“Our effort is to lead a national movement against Trump’s authoritarianism and kleptocracy and unnecessary wars and his contempt for the Constitution,” Mr. Sanders said. “But equally important, the American people need an alternative to the Democratic establishment, which is significantly dominated by big-money interests.”
In his trademark gruff manner, Mr. Sanders made clear that he takes particular pride in the former organizers, activists and supporters of his past campaigns who now occupy prominent positions in the party and who have embraced many of his policy priorities, including addressing income inequality and improving workers’ rights.
He name-checked some of them, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Representative Ro Khanna of California, Representative Greg Casar of Texas and Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor who was on Mr. Sanders’s last local endorsement slate in 2020 when he ran for State Assembly.
“Whatever happened that guy?” Mr. Sanders joked.
His new list of endorsements, Mr. Sanders said, is focused on younger people. His advisers said at least some were recruited or mobilized as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour last year.
While Mr. Sanders has not personally met with each of the candidates, his team vetted them to find individuals, both Democrats and independents, who are allies of his movement, which Mr. Sanders said is focused on the working class.
“What we are trying to do is build a grass-roots, multiracial, working-class party that will stand up to the oligarchs,” he said.
The endorsement list is both expansive and diverse.
In West Virginia, Mr. Sanders is backing the president of a local union for electricians, Dave Cantrell, who is running for the state’s House of Delegates as an independent, after previously losing in 2024 as a Democrat.
In Iowa, he endorsed India May, a nurse who shouted “people will die” at the state’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, last year in a moment that went viral, to serve in the State House.
And in New Mexico, he is looking even further down the ballot, throwing his support behind Daisy Maldonado for the Doña Ana County Commission, who is running in opposition to a large-scale and controversial data center the county recently approved called Project Jupiter that could involve up to $165 billion in bonds.
“What you also have to understand is we are taking on — when we take on the Democratic establishment — you’re taking on super PACs, you’re taking on billionaires who fund many of the people who oppose our candidates,” Mr. Sanders said, citing the plans of the artificial intelligence industry, which is behind most of the new data centers, to spend heavily on the elections. Such data centers have been criticized for pushing up energy prices for everyday Americans.
California and New York, two big blue states, account for roughly two dozen of the endorsements.
Mr. Sanders had previously endorsed candidates for the House, Senate, governor and one other statewide office.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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