The Denver Post

ESTIMATED 11,000 ATTEND RALLY FOR BERNIE SANDERS

More than 11,000 people reportedly attend Denver rally

- Photos by Rachel Woolf, Special to The Denver Post By Alex Burness

Democratic presidenti­al candidate touts Medicare for All, $15 federal minimum wage in Denver campaign visit.

Sen. Bernie Sanders took the stage in Denver on Sunday evening to a deafening roar from a crowd of many thousands of people who rarely let up.

Much of Sanders’ speech, inside a gigantic space at the Colorado Convention Center, sounded like a speech he gave last fall in Denver, nearly verbatim. He called for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a $15 federal minimum wage as part of a platform “by the working class, of the working class and for the working class.”

But since his last rally in Colorado, he’s distinguis­hed himself as the front-runner in the Democratic presidenti­al primary, having taken the popular vote in the chaotic Iowa caucuses and won the New Hampshire primary outright.

He also has a new and extremely financiall­y potent primary rival in former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“We’re going to end a corrupt political system in which billionair­es buy elections,” Sanders said. “Democracy, to me, means one person, one vote. Not Bloomberg or anybody else spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy an election.”

Sanders spent only a fraction of his roughly 35-minute speech criticizin­g President Donald

Trump. That segment of the speech was concise and forceful, with Sanders calling Trump “a pathologic­al liar who is running a corrupt administra­tion, who has no clue what the Constituti­on of the United States is about, who is a bully, who is vindictive, who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a homophobe, who is a xenophobe, who is a religious bigot.”

These and many other lines drew raucous applause. A significan­t portion of the crowd arrived hours early, and some waited in hour-long lines to buy campaign stickers and shirts. The campaign claimed more than 11,000 people attended, a total confirmed by a fire department official.

Emma Tang, a high school student from Colorado Springs who will be voting for the first time in November, said Sanders’ positions on health care and student loans appeal to her.

Eliminatin­g student debt, which Sanders supports, would “mean that I can get a higher education without worrying so much about how I’m going to pay for it,” Tang said.

She added, “His policies are geared toward the youth and the next generation. A lot of the other candidates are talking about the future but not so much in the future. Bernie Sanders is talking about a better world.”

Erik Hamlin, 45, of Arvada, said he’s a former Republican who now supports Sanders.

“I’m a blue-collar man. I make minimum wage,” said Hamlin, a constructi­on worker. “Bernie Sanders, he’s about supporting workers, supporting teachers, reforming the country and invigorati­ng the country.”

Hamlin was in line to donate $20 to Sanders. Nearby, a nurse said she’d give $3. The line was dozens of people deep more than an hour before the main program began.

Kelly Canfield, a business analyst from Denver, said he’s encouraged by how “mainstream” the Sanders agenda has gone.

“It’s about time,” said Canfield, 57. “None of it is radical. To me, if the Democratic Party picks Bernie, it’s more like going home, to FDR, instead of running to the right like they have been. This is as American as apple pie. Not radical.”

But there are still many Democrats who view Sanders’ platform as radical, including in Congress. The candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, told The Denver Post in an interview ahead of the speech that she believes her husband, if elected, would be able to convert non-believers and transform the Democratic Party to a party of Sanders.

“He would play a big role in terms of who’s elected to the

Congress,” she said.

Asked why, given that he’d need a sympatheti­c House and Senate to advance his plans, he hasn’t endorsed one of former Gov. John Hickenloop­er’s more progressiv­e primary rivals in Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, Jane Sanders said she wasn’t sure.

But, she added, “In 2016, Bernie ran on Medicare for All, free tuition to public colleges and universiti­es, $15 minimum wage and a Green New Deal. We were told all of these things were ridiculous, never going to happen. And now every single person — well, maybe not Hickenloop­er — but that is the conversati­on within the Democratic Party.

“So he’s changing the conversati­on, and if elected, he’ll change the country.”

The rally was the first in a series of Colorado visits by major presidenti­al candidates this month. President Donald Trump, former South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren will all be here in the next week. All but Biden, who’ll be in town for a private fundraiser hosted by former Interior Sec. Ken Salazar, will be holding public events.

Colorado’s presidenti­al primary ballots will be tallied on Super Tuesday, March 3. This is Colorado’s first presidenti­al primary after several caucus cycles.

 ??  ?? “We’re going to end a corrupt political system in which billionair­es buy elections,” presidenti­al candidate Bernie Sanders said in his speech at the Colorado Convention Center on Sunday.
“We’re going to end a corrupt political system in which billionair­es buy elections,” presidenti­al candidate Bernie Sanders said in his speech at the Colorado Convention Center on Sunday.
 ??  ?? A supporter watches the stage at the Colorado Convention Center during Sen. Bernie Sanders’ rally Sunday.
A supporter watches the stage at the Colorado Convention Center during Sen. Bernie Sanders’ rally Sunday.

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