Jane Sanders’ Motorcycle Diaries

http://fusion.net/story/282885/meet-bernies-wife-jane-sanders/?utm_source=fusiondaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=03212016


PHOENIX — A mother of five cried as she recounted being sexually assaulted in an immigration detention center. She pulled up the sleeves of her navy blue blazer to show where she had tried to slit her wrists with an asthma inhaler container. Across the table, a father who had been detained in a workplace immigration raid cried as he described the humiliation he felt living with a GPS-monitoring bracelet around his ankles.

They told their stories in the hopes that the woman sitting next to them would take them to her husband, who is running for president. “I’m here to listen because you’re fellow human beings,” said Jane Sanders, who still has a chance of becoming the next first lady if Sen. Bernie Sanders can pull off a series of upset wins over the next few months.

Jane Sanders—a 65-year-old former college president, community organizer, and motorcycle enthusiast—has largely avoided the spotlight as her husband battles Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. But on a recent solo swing through Arizona, which holds its primary on Tuesday, Sanders showed why she might be the campaign’s last best chance to decisively win the Latino and Native American voters her husband needs to breathe new life into the race.paigns across Arizona, Bernie’s wife is getting personal.


In a series of emotional meetings with Latino and Native American groups in Arizona, and in interviews with Fusion, the candidate’s wife was surprisingly candid about her own life, demonstrating a personal touch even she acknowledges her husband sometimes lacks.

“Bernie thinks and focuses on the issues and the policies. I feel, and I focus on how those policies could affect a woman I’m looking at right now,” Sanders told me in an interview at the campaign’s Arizona headquarters in Phoenix.

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