Marianne Williamson, Hollywood's Favorite New Age Guru, Backs Bernie Sanders for President

Williamson is urging her supporters to back the Vermont Senator over frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Former congressional candidate, social activist and spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson, who enjoys a wide following in Hollywood, is urging her supporters to back Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in his quest to wrest the Democrats’ presidential nomination away from frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Sanders, who runs as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats in Congress, describes himself as a “democratic socialist.” He voted against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act and favors adoption of a single-payer national health plan. Sanders frequently has spoken of his admiration for Scandinavian-style social democracy with its highly developed welfare state and wide array of social benefits.'

Williamson was one of 16 candidates seeking to fill Democrat Henry Waxman’s 33rd District House seat on the Westside. Her campaign promised to "heal" Washington. She finished fourth in the race.

Sanders is a Brooklyn-born University of Chicago graduate who spent time on an Israeli kibbutz, was the keynote speaker at one of Williamson’s Sister Giant conferences in March. Those events are designed to inspire women to run for public office.

In an email circulated Friday, Williamson described Sanders’ address as “stunning” and said that when asked how many in the audience would support him for president, the “entire room rose to their feet.”

“Let's work together to turn this ripple of hope into a massive wave of positivity and power," Williamson wrote to her supporters. “Winning the White House might indeed take a miracle, but many of us believe in those.” (Williamson’s best known book is the best-selling Course in Miracles.)

Sanders may pick up some of the progressive Hollywood support that has been attempting a draft of Massachusetts’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren, though the breadth of such backing remains unclear.

The Sanders campaign announced on Friday that it has raised more than $1.5 million online in the 24 hours since the senator announced his candidacy. The Washington Post noted: “It is a surprisingly heavy haul for a candidate whom some in the Democratic chattering class have cast off as a gadfly and viewed as unable to wrest the nomination from the overwhelming favorite, Hillary Rodham Clinton.”