Sen. Bernie Sanders waded into his home state’s gubernatorial politics for the first time in six years when he endorsed Democratic candidate for governor Amanda Janoo Wednesday morning.
Sanders had declined to endorse Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s Democratic challengers in 2022 and 2024, and he said in a video statement Wednesday that he personally likes the five-term incumbent.
“I’ve worked with the governor on a number of issues over the years,” Sanders said. “But I believe it’s time for a change, time for new leadership, time for a kind of energy and bold ideas that we’re not seeing in Montpelier right now.”
Sanders’ nod is among the most prominent endorsements to date for Janoo, a first-time statewide candidate who’s never held public office beyond justice of the peace in Burlington. Sen. Peter Welch and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint endorsed Janoo last month.
Sanders called Janoo’s proposal for “free primary and preventative care” a critical first step toward universal healthcare. Janoo has said she’ll use an income-tax increase on Vermonters making more than $250,000 a year to fund her universal primary care plan.
Sanders said her pledge to increase taxes on “luxury second homes, vacation rentals and large corporate investors” will reduce property taxes for working-class residents. He said Vermonters should also support her candidacy because she supports a moratorium on the construction of AI data centers. Scott vetoed legislation earlier this year that would have made it more difficult to site data centers in Vermont.
“In my view, Amanda Janoo has the leadership qualities and the energy we need right now to become a great governor,” Sanders said.
Scott’s campaign manager, Dustin Degree, noted Wednesday that Scott has won endorsements from former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and former Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie. He said the Sanders endorsement won’t meaningfully alter the dynamics in Scott’s 2026 reelection campaign.
“Gov. Scott has won every race he’s ever won without the support or endorsement from Sen. Sanders, and this year will be no different."Dustin Degree, campaign manager for Gov. Phil Scott
The Vermont Public 2026 Poll showed Scott with a 10-point lead over Janoo among likely voters last month.
“Gov. Scott has won every race he’s ever won without the support or endorsement from Sen. Sanders, and this year will be no different,” Degree said.
Janoo met privately last month with Sanders and his wife, Jane. Janoo said they spent time “getting in the weeds … on nerdy economic policy stuff that I love talking about.”
She said she did not explicitly ask Sanders for an endorsement, but she said in an interview Wednesday that many of her supporters have been more pressing.
“A lot of, I think, our supporters have been gently, I would say, harassing Bernie about an endorsement,” Janoo said. “He is somebody who has been a big inspiration and illustration of a different kind of politics.”
Matt Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said Sanders’ support didn’t clear a path to victory for the last two Democrats he endorsed for governor (Christine Hallquist in 2018 and Sue Minter in 2016). But in what has become the toughest reelection bid of Scott’s gubernatorial career, Dickinson said the endorsement “definitely matters.”
“If there’s somebody who doesn’t know Janoo, and she is struggling a little bit with name recognition, the fact that Sanders comes out tells people, ‘Oh, well, she’s probably a progressive if Sanders is endorsing her.’ So it’s a signal. And that’s important,” he said.
More important than the endorsement, Dickinson said, is whatever energy Sanders invests in her campaign in the less than four weeks until Election Day.
“Is he going to try to line up donors for her? Is going to actually campaign with her side by side?” he said.
Janoo has called Sanders one of her biggest political inspirations. She credited his 2016 presidential campaign for sparking a progressive movement that’s making electoral strides across the country this year.
“The political establishment and Party machine worked hard to undermine his candidacy,” Janoo said in a written statement Wednesday. “But something much bigger came out of those campaigns: a generation of people who decided they weren’t willing to just complain about the system anymore. They were going to get involved. They were going to organize.”
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