Thanedar has referred to himself as a “ fiscally savvy Bernie ,” and is pushing a platform full of Sanders’s progressive policy priorities. He’s claiming he will advocate for things like a single-payer health care system and a $15 minimum wage, both of which are uphill battles in Michigan and can only pass with a committed governor and legislature who do not abandon them out of political timidity. The campaign ads he has spent millions on call him the “most progressive Democrat running for governor.”

Shri Thanedar, a millionaire who has poured millions of dollars of his own money into the race, ultimately decided to run as a progressive Democrat. He is now first in some polls, eclipsing former state Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer and former Detroit Public Health chief Abdul El-Sayed, whose campaign is largely staffed by veterans of Sanders’s actual presidential campaign.

A Michigan gubernatorial candidate who has branded himself as the Bernie Sanders of the 2018 race privately mused about running as an independent or Republican just weeks before launching his campaign, according to four political consultants and one small business association representative he met with.

Joe DiSano, who runs the Michigan-based consulting firm DiSano Strategies, told The Intercept that he first met with Thanedar in January 2017, before he announced his bid for governor. “Shri didn’t know what party banner to run under. But he was certainly running,” DiSano said.

At the time, DiSano was advising Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, who was considering joining the race.

“I told him, even if I was free to help, I couldn’t assist if he ran as a Republican. I offered to help him work through the process if he ran as a Democrat,” said DiSano. “He agreed to run as a Democrat, but it wasn’t until well into February 2017. Initially, he was playing with the idea of running as an independent. I pointed out, in Michigan that is almost impossible at the statewide level. Finally, I ran some numbers showing him that futility of running as an independent.”

Adrian Hemond, CEO at Grassroots Midwest, which advises candidates in both major parties, met with Thanedar in late winter of 2017 (he could not recall the exact date).

Hemond, who is a prominent Michigan Democratic consultant, was joined by Dan McMaster, a prominent Republican consultant, as well as Brian Began, a former staffer for Michigan’s House Republican Caucus. At the meeting, they asked Thanedar what party he was thinking of running in.

To their surprise, Hemond said, Thanedar told them it didn’t matter.

“He came to us looking for advice about running for governor, and was obviously in the market for a consultant,” he said. “We asked him what party he wanted to run from and he said he didn’t care. He said whichever side we thought he had the best chance to win on. Which we thought was interesting.”

They started asking Thanedar about his positions on the issues. “He tried to be very cagey about what his issue positions were,” Hemond said. “For instance, we had a conversation about abortion politics. And we told him, look, you know, if you run as a Democrat, then obviously you’re going to be running as being pro-choice. If you run as a Republican, then you’re going to have to run as being pro-life. Are you going to be comfortable with that? Is your family going to be comfortable with that? He indicated yes. I don’t know if that was just him in sort of his political ambition, saying, yeah, I’ll play along with that, or if he was just trying to game that out. But we asked him about issue positions on a number of different issues that can play in one or the other of the primaries. And his position was mostly that he didn’t care. That he would adopt whatever position was beneficial for him to run for governor.”

Both McMaster and Began confirmed Hemond’s account. “When we met with Sri, obviously the first thing we asked was what party he was in. He wanted to hear our opinion,” Began said. Thanedar, Began recalled, believed that his personal biography would be enough to win the race, and told the consultants he planned to commission a screenplay about himself.

“He was looking for advice on whether to run as an R or a D. He did admit he was pro-life, which is interesting, [now] that he is running as a progressive Democrat,” said McMaster. “I laughed when he walked out the door, because a fool and their money part ways often, and that was my impression.”

Began, meanwhile, said he couldn’t divine from the conversation where Thanedar stood on abortion rights, while DiSano came away believing he was “adamantly pro-choice.”

In February, DiSano met again with Thanedar. “He told me he was going to run as a Democrat during a meeting at his home,” DiSano explained. “I think the only things that stopped him from running as a Republican was that he was adamantly pro-choice and Trump had just popped his first version of the travel ban. I asked Shri, ‘Do you think the party of Trump is going to nominate a pro-choice immigrant from India, with brown skin and a funny accent, the same time they are pushing this travel ban?’ That seemed to strike a chord with him.”

DiSano described Thanedar as actually quite opposed to progressives and, particularly, Sanders.

“My key takeaway from my experience with Shri is his disdain for ‘progressives.’ He repeatedly expressed disdain for them, and Bernie Sanders in particular. I don’t disagree with his assessment of Sanders, but I think I witnessed an insight into where his political true north really is,” said DiSano, who is no fan of Sanders himself.

DiSano said one of Thanedar’s specific objections to Sanders was the fact that he wanted to raise taxes. “Shri was in the end-process of selling his company. He said under Sanders, he would pay 90 percent of his profit,” he said. “Of course, the purchaser is now suing Shri for fraud.”

Sanders did not call for a 90 percent tax rate, but did defend former President Dwight Eisenhower imposing such a marginal income tax; Thanedar denies that the sale was in any way fraudulent, and is contesting the claim in court as having no factual basis.

After this story was published, Thanedar provided an email that Hemond sent in July 2017, attempting to reconnect.

“Hope all is well! Your campaign finance filing dominated the media cycle yesterday!” Hemond wrote. “I wanted to take a moment to follow up with you about your campaign and ways we may be able to assist. We’d love to come see you in the near future if you have some availability. Look forward to chatting again soon. Thanks!”

Hemond said that he couldn’t comment in detail on the overture, but that he was hoping to connect Thanedar with another client. “I was pitching him on taking up an issue for an institutional client that I thought would be helpful to his campaign, as well as that client,” Hemond said. “I’m bound by a pretty strict confidentiality agreement, so I can’t discuss the client or the issue, but I will say it involved publicizing an issue via his campaign with that benefitting my client, and him benefitting by the issue helping him with a segment of organized labor, which was a weakness we identified in his campaign when we met. He did call me back after this email, seemed interested, then never followed up. The client lost interest in him as a messenger fairly quickly anyway.”

DiSano’s and Hemond’s accounts are similar to that of Rob Fowler’s. Fowler, who runs the Small Business Association of Michigan, or SBAM, previously told MIRS News, a local outlet, that when Thanedar met with the group before announcing his gubernatorial bid last year, he was still undecided whether to run as a Democrat or a Republican.

“We told him, ‘You need to settle that, and you need to settle it quickly,’” Fowler said. Thanedar gave a statement to MIRS News, contesting the claim that he hadn’t made up his mind. “I had been a Democrat all my life. I have voted Democratic all my life,” he said. “When I was going around talking to different people, I received some unsolicited advice, that, because I was a business person, I should be a Republican.”

An email to Fowler requesting comment was met with an automatic reply saying he was traveling out of the country.

DiSano said he met with Thanedar the same day as the meeting with SBAM. “It seems our conversations with Shri were strikingly similar,” he said of Fowler’s reported conversation with Thanedar.