Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking his improbable campaign for the Democrat nomination into deep-red states. “We’re going to go to Alabama, we’re going to go to Mississippi, we’re going to go to conservative states,” Sanders said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
A recent Sanders event in Alabama was organized by three volunteers on Facebook. The organizers said they had expected about 30 people to attend. Instead, some 300 Sanders supporters turned out to see the iconoclast politician from the Northeast.
“He’s got me excited in politics again,” said supporter Peter Stuart said. “He’s not just in it for the money or his own career. To me, he’s what politicians should be.”
“I think Jesus was a socialist,” Stuart added. Republicans he says, “talk Christian values and family values, but they don’t do them,” he added.
Long forgotten in Presidential sweepstakes, Alabama is poised to take a larger role in the 2016 nominating contests. A number of Southern states are planning an “SEC primary,” to inject the region into the presidential contest. Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have already set primary contests for March 1st, setting up a “super Tuesday” like contest after the Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina votes.
Legislation on the Governor’s desk in Alabama would add the state to the early block of primaries.