He is not your typical candidate for Congress. He favors slashing military spending by at least 50 percent, proposes raising taxes on the rich before the election, runs against both the Democratic and Republican parties and is a socialist.

Yet Bernie Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, Vt., is in a dead heat with Republican first-term incumbent Peter Smith for the state`s lone House seat. The most recent poll shows Smith leading Sanders by the statistically insignificant margin of 1 percentage point-with a third of the voters undecided.

As in most races, the number of undecided voters is expected to decrease closer to the November election.

Unlike 1988 when he first ran against Smith, Sanders has been running stronger in rural areas-he leads Smith in two of the state`s four geographic regions-and he has benefited from the lack of a strong Democratic candidate.

The poll of likely voters, conducted from June 27 to July 1, showed Smith with 34 percent of the vote and Sanders at 33 percent. Democrat Dolores Sandoval, a political novice whose name was unrecognized by 76 percent of the voters, got 1 percent. Thirty-two percent were undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus 5.5 percent.

Sanders attributes his success and high name recognition to his eight years as mayor of Burlington, the state`s largest city with 38,000 residents. During his tenure, local columnists jokingly referred to the city as The People`s Republic of Burlington and the only American town with its own foreign policy, a takeoff on his socialist views.

In 1987, U.S. News & World Report magazine named Sanders one of the nation`s 20 best mayors.

Sanders points out that he made good on a campaign promise to expand the supply of low-income housing in the relatively affluent city, even though his Independent Progressive Party never held a majority on the 13-member City Council.

''What people saw, in fact, was that progressive government does work to the benefit of the working people, poor people and the elderly,'' Sanders said, referring to his four terms as mayor. ''It`s not just rhetoric. I have a strong record of achievement, of standing up to the ruling class, of representing the average worker.''

But Smith has raised questions about the effectiveness of a person so far from the political mainstream, portraying Sanders as unable to get along with either Democrats or Republicans.

In an appeal for campaign contributions this spring, Smith recalled his last race against Sanders and said, ''But that race was hard-fought and close- I won by only 3 percent of the vote! As you can see from the enclosed clips, he`s back . . . and Dolores Sandoval, who ran in 1988, is running again as well. This is a potentially dangerous combination. Sandoval could draw enough votes from me to allow socialist Bernie Sanders to win.''

Smith`s vote has been increasingly liberal in his two years in Congress. He has scored high with voters for his position on fiscal issues and has a better rating than Sanders on education issues.

He shares Sanders` criticism of the Bush administration`s handling of the savings and loan crisis. But Smith also has supported some gun-control legislation, which has angered the NRA.

Sanders` ideal revolution would cut military spending at least by 50 percent over the next five years, raise the taxes of the rich, institute a national health-care system, develop a third political party that represents the poor and middle-class, overhaul campaign financing and improve protection of the environment.

The Brooklyn-born son of a painter and homemaker did not always hold far Left views. He said his parents voted Democratic, but were not active politically. It was as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, Sanders said, that his views crystalized.

''During that period, I became active in the peace movement and the civil rights movement,'' he said. '' . . . There were many people who were liberal and they were concerned about poverty, or they were concerned about racism, or they were concerned about militarism but they never put them together or saw the connection.

''They never saw that the roots of many of these problems lie in an economic system in which 1 percent of the population owns half of the wealth of the country, an economic system in which the rich controls, to a large degree, the political and economic life of the country.''

Sanders realizes his views aren`t widely shared in America. To broaden his appeal among voters, he packages himself a catalyst for change.

It is time, he tells voters, to send someone unconventional to Washington, someone without ties to either major party.

Actually, the recent debate on whether voters could trust their future with an avowed socialist began almost two decades ago. In the 1970s, Sanders unsuccessfully ran for statewide office four times. In 1981 he was elected mayor of Burlington by a 10-vote margin. He was easily elected to three subsequent two-year terms and came close to defeating Smith two years ago.

Sanders, who surprised the political experts before, is hoping to spring an upset.

''If we win here, the signal goes out all over the country that you can take on big money and you can take on the two-party system and win,'' Sanders explained. ''That means from California to Maine, it will give hope to people who are disgusted with the status quo politics and want some real political change.''