Senator Bernard "Bernie" Sanders, an independent from Vermont , will announce Thursday that he is running for president. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
This story has been updated.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a blunt, self-described socialist who has become a favorite of progressive activists for his denunciations of big banks and the financial elite, will jump into the 2016 presidential campaign on Thursday, according to two people familiar with his plans.
One Sanders ally -- who requested anonymity to discuss the senator's yet-to-be announced plans, which were first reported Tuesday by Vermont Public Radio -- said Sanders is expected to make his intentions known this week, then hold a rally in Vermont next month. He plans to run as a Democrat, according to a knowledgeable Democrat.
Tad Devine, one of the Democratic Party’s leading consultants and a former high-level campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis, has signed to serve as Sanders’s political adviser.
“He is not only a longtime client but a friend. I believe he could deliver an enormously powerful message that the country is waiting to hear right now and do it in a way that succeeds,” Devine said in an interview last year.
In recent months, Devine and Sanders, who first worked together on Sanders's campaigns in the 1990s, have been mapping out how the brusque senator could navigate the race and present a formidable challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
[Bernie Sanders, weighing presidential run, calls for ‘political revolution’.]
Sanders, 73, a Brooklyn native, is the longest-serving independent in congressional history. Before winning election to the Senate in 2006, he served in the House and as mayor of Burlington.
Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, has seen his profile rise since 2010, when he delivered a marathon filibuster on economic policy. That speech turned into a book, and Sanders has since appeared frequently on MSNBC prime-time and HBO.
The Brooklyn-born senator has served in Congress since 1990, when he was elected as Vermont's lone representative in the House. He won a U.S. Senate seat in 2006, and was reelected to a second term in 2012.
Jose A. DelReal contributed to this report
Robert Costa is a national political reporter at The Washington Post.
Dan Balz is Chief Correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s National Editor, Political Editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent.
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