(The Hill) — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the Senate’s most prominent progressives, says he likely won’t run again for the Senate after his fourth term expires in 2030.
Asked in an interview with Politico whether this would be his last term in Congress, Sanders replied: “I’m 83 now. I’ll be 89 when I get out of here. You can do the figuring. I don’t know, but I would assume, probably, yes.”
Sanders won re-election last month, defeating Republican Gerald Malloy 63 percent to 32 percent.
Sanders has served in Congress since 1991, spending 16 years in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2006.
He finished in second place in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries and currently serves as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Sanders, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, recently criticized the Democratic Party for not putting enough emphasis on bread-and-butter economic issues.
He urged Vice President Kamala Harris during this year’s presidential campaign to talk more about economic inequality in the United States and declared that Democrats had “abandoned” the working class after she lost.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement released after Election Day.