While Sen. Bernie Sanders will be rallying with a pair of Arizona congressmen in Phoenix on Sunday, most of his trip is focused on his own appearances rather than elevating other specific Democratic candidates. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Bernie Sanders campaigns in Trump country

Bernie Sanders is taking his pitch to Trump country.

The Vermont senator is doing it entirely on his own terms — not as a proponent of national Democrats’ strategies, or even often their candidates, out west.


“It’s absolutely imperative that we get out to those states that Trump won, speak to the working people of those states, and make very clear that the campaign that Trump won on — where he promised to stand for working people — turned out to be a lie,” Sanders told POLITICO in an interview Thursday, shortly before taking off for Texas and Arizona, two states the president carried by single digits in the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s important to rally people around the progressive agenda, which says that we don’t give tax breaks to billionaires,” Sanders said, promising to add even more Trump-voting states to his travel schedule.

While the 2016 — and possibly 2020 — presidential candidate will be rallying with a pair of Arizona congressmen in Phoenix on Sunday, most of his trip is focused on his own appearances rather than elevating other specific Democratic candidates.

Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Just weeks after visiting Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan — all of which voted for Trump in 2016 — and Illinois, in part to back congressional candidates, Sanders is scheduled to appear at the South by Southwest conference in Austin on Friday.

He is then set to headline a rally put on by the political group spawned from his campaign, Our Revolution, in San Antonio later in the day, before speaking at another Our Revolution rally in Lubbock on Saturday. Then, in Arizona, he will appear with Reps. Raul Grijalva and Ruben Gallego.

“In Arizona, we’ve got two progressive Members of Congress who I strongly support, but mostly what this is about is not just supporting individual candidates. It is getting people out and supporting voter turnout,” he said, pointing to strong Democratic voter turnout numbers in Texas’ primaries on Tuesday.

Accordingly, Sanders declined to comment in any details about either of the Democrats aiming to join him in the Senate by winning GOP-held seats in the two states.

Sanders demurred when asked about Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz, who has captured the imagination of grass-roots progressives hoping for a major upset.

“I am not there to campaign for any particular candidate in this particular trip,” he said.

Sanders similarly batted away a question about Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat running to replace retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Sinema is a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition who has publicly worried that her party is moving too far to the left while refusing to outright criticize Donald Trump, and dismissing favored Sanders policies like single-payer health care as unrealistic in recent news interviews.

“My thought is none. I’m there for two congressmen who are progressives,” Sanders said. “I’m not there on any Senate effort.”

Sanders is headed to two states that have been at the center of recent Democratic politics.

In Texas, Tuesday’s primaries showcased high levels of Democratic enthusiasm, but also tensions between some grassroots activists and Washington party leaders.

In one case, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dropped opposition research on Democratic candidate Laura Moser in an apparent effort to keep her out of the run-off in her congressional primary race in suburban Houston.

Shortly thereafter, Moser — who had the backing of the local chapter of Our Revolution, and whose husband was a senior Sanders campaign aide — was endorsed by the national Our Revolution group. She wound up making it to the run-off with a second-place finish in the first round of voting.

“I thought it was an outrage for the DCCC to do what they did,” Sanders said. “I think the American people are profoundly disgusted by the level of negativity and ugliness that we see in campaigns right now, and the DCCC should not be contributing to that debasement.”

Far from heading only into targeted districts where Democrats clearly stand to pick up House seats, Sanders' trip includes a stop through an area — Lubbock County — where Trump carried two-thirds of the vote over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Traveling to more than half the states in the country since then, working with a range of organizing organizations and causes, Sanders has made a point of hitting heavily conservative territory, including multiple visits to heavily Trump-backing states like West Virginia and Kentucky.

He is not the only progressive with potential national ambitions to swing through such territory, as Democrats aim to rebuild the party or build goodwill in such areas: former Vice President Joe Biden has recently scheduled swings through Montana, North Dakota, and Indiana; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper will soon swing through Idaho; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has in the last few weeks stopped in Alabama and Mississippi; and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Seth Moulton have both made a point of popping up in Texas as of late.

Yet Sanders’ trip comes as he has also intensified his considerations of a potential 2020 campaign. In January, he convened his top aides to strategize over what a run would look like, and he has been systematically working to plug political holes that dogged him in 2016, shoring up ties with party and union leaders while studying foreign policy.

Plus, in addition to his travel to less conventional destinations for Democrats, he has visited both Iowa and New Hampshire — the first presidential primary states — multiple times.

