Bernie Sanders married his college girlfriend, Deborah Shiling in 1964. They didn’t have any children and their marriage didn’t last more than 2 years. After that, he briefly dated his girlfriend Susan Campbell Mott and the couple has a son Levi Sanders together from their relationship.
He married his second wife Jane O’Meara Driscoll in 1988, Jane gave birth to three children: Dave Driscoll, Carina Driscoll and Heather Titus and the couple also have seven grandchildren.
Born and raised in the Brooklyn, New York City, Bernie graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. As a student, he was an active protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality. He also organized protests for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968).
Sanders also ran third-party campaigns for governor and the U.S. senator in the early to mid-1970s after settling in Vermont in 1968. His campaigns for governor and senator were unsuccessful. He then stood for the mayor of Burlington, Vermont's most populous city, which he won by a margin of ten votes, and he went on to be reelected as the Burlington's major for another three times.
He was elected to represent Vermont in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990. He then co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a membership organization within the Democratic Congressional Caucus, in 1991. In 2006, Bernie was elected to the U.S. Senate succeeding Senator Jim Jeffords, and the election of the United States Senate in Vermont was held on November 7, 2006. In 2012, he was reelected with 71% of popular vote to his name.
On April 30, 2015, Bernie announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and on July 12, 2016, he endorsed Hilary Clinton in the Presidential election, which turned out unsuccessful against Republican Donald Trump.
Besides a successful politician, Bernie is also an author of several books such as Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution (2017), Our Revolution (2016), Outsider in the House (1997), and so on. His 1997's memoir Outsider in the House was re-released in 2015 as Outsider in the White House.
When Bernie first entered the Senate, his annual compensation for the position was roughly $165 thousand which stood at $174 thousand in 2016.
In July 2015, Bernie's personal filing lists assets valued at somewhere $194,026 and $741 thousand in his wife's name, Jane Sanders, the filing also lists credit card debt. The filing doesn't' include properties held by Bernie and his wife, which brings in the pairs home in Washington D.C. which roughly costs $726 thousand and a Vermont home approximately worth $320 thousand.
In 2016, Bernie made a revenue of more than $1 million, which came from his position as a Vermont Senate and furthermore from his book royalties, most notably a $795 thousand advance for his book Our Revolution, which was published on November 15, 2016. Back then, he also earned $63,750 for his unpublished book Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, written collaboratively with Kate Waters, and another $6,735 for Outsider in the White House.
With his incomes as a Senate and an author, Bernie net worth stands at around $800 thousand.
