Sanders Seeks New Political Candidates for 'Working Class Movement'

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has joined forces with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., again as part of his “Fighting the Oligarchy” tour, starting with a rally Saturday in Los Angeles, and is set to meet with potential candidates who share his vision and philosophy as they weigh runs for political office in 2026, reports the Washington Post.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are visiting cities across the U.S. to discuss how to "take on the oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country."

They will stop in Utah, Idaho, and Montana and several of the most competitive California districts over the next days.

"In these extraordinarily difficult and depressing times, I want people in the communities that we visit and around the country to understand that they are not alone when they feel outraged by what Trump is doing to our country," Sanders said in a video posted to X, calling the rallies a stand against "oligarchy, authoritarianism, xenophobia and attacks on the working class," that provide "hope for people all across the country."

Sanders, according to the Post, wants to find candidates who espouse his values to run in red areas of the country where Democrats have essentially given up. But he doesn’t want heavily funded super PACs from playing an outsize role in those races.

“You have a two-party system, both parties dominated by big money equally,” Sanders said at a recent rally in Las Vegas. “Our job in the coming weeks is not just to take Trump on every step of the way. … It’s to have a vision for where our country should be going. … You’re not going to make the changes we need so long as we continue to have a corrupt campaign finance system.”

He and AOC’s rallies are drawing in record-breaking crowds, a promising sign for Democrats pushing their party to fight back against President Donald Trump’s policies.

“He understands this moment,” Faiz Shakir, a longtime Sanders adviser who ran for Democratic National Committee chair earlier this year, told the Post.

“There’s a muscularity in the way he wants to fight against them with a clear conviction of where we would go.