Five things Californians need to know about Bernie Sanders

Dec. 19--Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has the largest ground game in California and is working to win over voters across the Golden State. He's also appealing to his base of supporters who backed him 2016.

Here are five things Californians need to know about him as the March 3, 2020 primary election approaches.

1. He wants to abolish private health insurance

Sanders is calling for a universal single-payer government-run health care program that would abolish private health insurance. While he acknowledges taxes for middle class Americans would go up to help fund his Medicare for All proposal, he says overall costs would go down since he'd eliminate premiums, deductibles, copayments and surprise bills.

"The function of healthcare is not to make huge profits for the wealthy, it is to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child through a Medicare-for-All, single payer system," Sanders told a crowd of supporters in Sacramento in August.

2. Sanders has the biggest California operation

Sanders' 2020 campaign has more paid staff members in California than any other candidate, with more than 40 workers on his payroll. He also continues to open up new offices across the state, with the latest opening held in Coachella on Dec. 16.

By mid-November, his California team had surpassed 8 million attempted voter contacts. Anna Bahr, a spokeswoman for his campaign in California said in November that 730,000 Californians have taken action with the campaign through house parties, volunteering at rallies or financial contributions.

Recent polls have shown Sanders gaining ground in the state in recent months and neck-and-neck with former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. A December survey of likely voters conducted by CNN found him in a statistical tie with Biden and Warren, with Biden carrying 21 percent of the vote, Sanders having 20 percent support and Warren at 17 percent. Sanders fared well with young and Latino people, as well as those concerned about health care and climate change.

3. He's calling for free college tuition for all

Unlike most of the 2020 Democratic field, Sanders wants every American to be able to go to a four-year public college or university without any tuition costs. He feels the same way about trade schools and historically black colleges and universities.

He also wants to cancel all student loan debt, which he believes adds up to about $1.6 trillion. He wants to cap student loan interest rates at 1.88 percent going forward. To reduce the overall cost of attendance, he'd expand Pell Grants to cover non-tuition and fee costs.

"In a nation that bailed out the crooks on Wall Street, in a Congress that gave over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top one percent and large profitable corporations, if we can do that, if we can do that, then we can cancel all student debt," he said in Sacramento.

He also told his Sacramento supporters that public school teachers should make at least $60,000 a year.

4. He's appealing to California labor unions

At a Sacramento rally in, Joaquin Chavez, vice president of CWA 9119, which represents thousands of technical and professional workers in University of California system, expressed his union's support for Sanders.

Sanders has also earned the backing of National Nurses United, a labor group representing more than 150,000 members, and United Teachers Los Angeles, the second-largest teachers' local in the country.

Sanders is courting union members by calling for a $15 minimum wage and requiring employers to prove "just cause" in order to fire workers. He's vowed to double union membership by the end of his first term.

5. Sanders is passionate about climate change

The senator has made a strong effort to capitalize on Californians' growing concerns about climate change. He held a town hall in Chico in August and visited the town of Paradise, which saw 85 people killed in last year's devastating Camp Fire.

During a November interview with the Fresno Bee, Sanders called out President Donald Trump and other climate skeptics for not acknowledging the seriousness of the issue.

"It is hard for me to imagine, to be honest with you, that anybody in California, of all places, would be laughing off climate change. What more do you need to see? Does the whole state have to burn down?"

Sanders is calling for the creation of 20 million new jobs to combat global warming and transition the country to 100 percent renewable energy through a so-called Green New Deal. He also wants to phase out nuclear power by halting the construction of new power plants and placing a moratorium on power plant license renewals.

To clean up communities already hurt by some of the nation's biggest polluters, he would spend $238 billion to clean up Superfund sites and $150 billion to clean up and revitalize brownfield sites.

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