Sonoma County supporters of Bernie Sanders out in force

Don Bates came to Bernie Sanders’ online roadshow Wednesday night in Sebastopol out of curiosity over the septuagenarian socialist who is running a long-shot campaign for president.

“We’re political types of people,” said Bates, a Graton-area resident. “We like to check out the candidates.”

But his wife, Sarah, said she is “absolutely” on board with the Vermont senator who lags far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls but has already flexed considerable online fundraising muscle with the primary elections a half-year away.

They were in a crowd of about 180 people, young and old, who showed up at the Sebastopol Grange for one of the more than 3,500 “Bernie 2016 organizing kickoff” events held Wednesday night from coast to coast.

A collective audience of 100,000 tuned in, Sanders said in his brief speech, live-streamed from a house party in southwest Washington, D.C.

“We think we’re making history,” Sanders said, referring to the Internet-enabled scope of the organizing event.

The grange crowd applauded loudly as Sanders, the 73-year-old left-wing Don Quixote running as a Democrat and tilting at the political establishment windmills, ticked off his talking points, including income inequality, free college education, refinanced student loan debt and a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system.

Above all, Sanders advocated a “political revolution” to force Wall Street and what he called the military-industrial complex to make major economic and political reforms. “The only way we win this thing is when we all come together,” he said.

“He seems to be the only person talking about the issues that are pertinent now,” said Tui Wilschinsky of Sebastopol.

“He’s for everything that I’m for,” said Eileen Bill of Santa Rosa. “Whether or not he can win, I don’t know.”

Bill said she had no problem with Sanders’ embrace of socialism, the brand Barack Obama’s critics have tried to stamp on the president for years. “Well, we are (socialist) in some ways,” she said. “We’ve got Medicare and Social Security.”

There were eight other Sanders organizing events in the county: at Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park, an Oakmont recreation center, bars in Sonoma and Cloverdale and private homes in Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Sebastopol and Windsor.

Ron Norton, a Petaluma-area resident attending the Sebastopol event, said he admired Sanders’ honesty and consistency. “He’s had the same positions for 30 years and hasn’t been flip-flopping all over the place,” Norton said.

His wife, Donna Norton, cited Sanders’ opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move oil from Canada to American pipelines. “Hillary isn’t taking a position,” she said. “That’s horrible.”

Sanders’ issues, including a $1 trillion public works plan and eliminating college tuition, are in “perfect pitch” with Sonoma County’s left-leaning sensibilities, said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist. Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2 to 1 among registered voters in the county, which gave Gov. Jerry Brown 75 percent support in November and President Barack Obama 71 percent in 2012.

“Sanders connects with the progressives,” McCuan said, referring to the liberal North Bay bloc that sent former Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma to Congress for 20 years and may be less than thrilled by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Sanders, who is six years older than Clinton, fills the far-left vacuum left when Elizabeth Warren, the populist Massachusetts senator, declined to run in 2016, McCuan said.

Wilschinsky said he’d like to see a Sanders-Warren ticket, with a twist: running as “co-presidents, a new way of doing things.”

Both Sanders, a white-haired grandfather, and Donald Trump, his political polar opposite with the blonde comb-over, bring personality and passion to the campaign, traits that Clinton is hard-pressed to match, McCuan said.

Sanders, who announced his candidacy in April, quickly raised $15 million, mostly from online donors - a feat reminiscent of another Vermonter, former Gov. Howard Dean, whose campaign raised $7.6 million in the second quarter of 2003, primarily online.

Still, he is a distant second to Clinton with less than 20 percent support in five national polls this month. Clinton leads by 51 percent to 63 percent among potential Democratic candidates.

And Sanders, a relative unknown until recently, has an “Achilles’ heel,”’ McCuan said, polling even worse among nonwhite voters, who make up 35 percent of Democratic primary voters.

His career is limited to Vermont, a state with the nation’s second-smallest population (626,600) that is 95 percent white, where Sanders has been elected to Congress eight times and twice to the Senate.

Sanders could do well in states with a predominantly white population, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, which happen to be the first two stops on the 2016 caucus and primary election schedule, McCuan said. But to seriously challenge Clinton, he will need to raise millions of dollars and connect with minority voters, McCuan said.

There’s another obstacle, as well, according to McCuan.

“People who call themselves socialists don’t get to the White House,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.