Sanders slams wealthy presidential hopefuls, calls for campaign finance reform in Carson The progressive presidential hopeful says flood of campaign cash is eroding American democracy

James DeHaven | Reno Gazette-Journal

It’s long past time to publicly fund elections and take big money out of politics, two-time Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders told a Carson City audience on Monday.

The visit marked Sanders’ first stop back in Northern Nevada since suffering a heart attack during an October campaign appearance in Las Vegas.

But the 78-year-old self-described Democratic Socialist showed no signs of slowing down during his roughly hourlong town hall at the Stewart Community Center.

Sanders opened the event, held on Washoe Tribal land near the historic Stewart Indian School, with a fiery pledge to change the federal government’s long-fraught relationship with Native American communities.

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He then offered a typically pugnacious condemnation of America’s wealthiest health insurers, drugmakers and Wall Street “crooks,” before pivoting to campaign finance reform — an increasingly popular Sanders talking point in the weeks since billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg joined an already crowded Democratic presidential primary field.

“In my view, every single day we’re moving further and further away from democracy,” Sanders told around 400 supporters gathered in Carson. “It’s not only Trump’s refusal to follow the law. … It’s the billionaires able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates that represent the wealthy and powerful. That’s not democracy.

“You can’t have elections when billionaires are so powerful. When billionaires are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to be elected president.”

Sanders, who has famously shunned big-dollar donors and corporate campaign fundraisers, didn't stray far from that script during a Monday night town hall in Reno.

The candidate again promised to work toward publicly funding presidential elections and overturning Citizens United v FEC — a controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision often blamed for the rise of dark money in politics.

He later won loud cheers for his perennially popular proposals to offer all Americans free health care, child care, public college tuition and student loan debt forgiveness.

"I have a feeling the people of Nevada are ready for a political revolution," Sanders told several hundred supporters crowded into a ballroom at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. "We’re going to win because our strategy is the exact opposite of Trump’s — we bring people together.

"We bring people together whether they're black, white, Latino or Native American or Asian American."

While in Carson, Sanders also reconnected with John Weigel, a 58-year-old Navy veteran with Huntington’s disease who in September told Sanders he had lost his veterans health coverage and was tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt.

Weigel credited Sanders, together with U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jacky Rosen, for helping him restore that coverage, even offering the candidate his military flight jacket. Sanders turned down the jacket, but thanked Weigel for the gesture.

Sanders, like several other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, earlier on Monday reiterated his opposition to controversial proposals to drill for oil and gas in the Ruby Mountains near Elko.

He has also come out against the Air Force’s similarly divisive, 300,000-acre planned expansion of the Nevada Test and Training Range north of Las Vegas.

Most polls of likely Nevada caucusgoers show the candidate in a virtual tie with fellow progressive firebrand Elizabeth Warren, who is scheduled to appear at Truckee Meadows Community College on Tuesday.

Surveys suggest former Vice President Joe Biden remains Silver State Democrats’ top choice for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders — who won Washoe County’s 2016 Democratic presidential caucus before dropping the statewide vote to Hillary Clinton — plans to join Biden and Warren for a much-anticipated Tuesday town hall hosted the politically influential Culinary Union.

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James DeHaven is the politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal. He covers campaigns, the Nevada Legislature and everything in between. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.