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Democrat Challenges Sanders For Senate Seat

Jon Svitavsky
Jon Svitavsky for U.S. Senate from Vermont/Facebook
Jon Svitavsky

Independent Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders won his last re-election with 71 percent of the vote against five opponents.  Yet that is not intimidating Democrat Jon Svitavsky, who has announced that he is challenging the state’s junior senator and former presidential candidate in 2018.  He says he’s running because he believes  Sanders is extremely damaging to Democrats.
”He’s been viciously criticizing them for decades. But the way he split the vote, the way he did not discourage his bots from their lies and innuendo towards Hilary Clinton, towards the way that he was very aware of the fact that the Russians were trying to use him to split the election, I think that Sanders is absolutely responsible for Trump being President. And he continues to attack Democrats calling them the same as Republicans which I think is absolutely absurd. And he is nothing but damaging to the Democratic Party and I think he gave us Donald Trump his presidency. I think the man has almost no accomplishments. He’s surrounded by scandal and so there are many, many reasons that I want to challenge Sanders as well as the fact that I know him personally.”  

But University of Vermont Political Scientist Garrison Nelson believes Svitavsky has no chance of winning.   “He’s running against a man who won four elections as mayor, eight elections statewide elections to the House of Representatives and two elections for the U.S. Senate.  This is a juggernaut.  Bernie has close to $4 million in his kitty. He has name recognition throughout the country.  He ran against a woman who is the wife of a former President, a U.S. Senator and a Secretary of State and he captured 22 states! Bernie is a major national figure. And all you understand about this guy is that he and Bernie had a squabble about 30 years ago and he’s still angry about it which justifies his running for office.  However that’s not going to be a rationale for anybody to vote for him.”

Svitavsky plans to lay out a different plank of his platform every two weeks, including the opioid crisis, agriculture, and the environment.