Socialist Sanders on low end of earners among candidates
Jul 16, 2015, 3:42 PM
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — As you might expect of a candidate who labels himself a Democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders is at the low end of earners among candidates for president in 2016.
But the Vermont independent, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, earns a $174,000 Senate salary that puts him among the top 5 percent of Americans in income.
The Sanders campaign produced a new financial disclosure form Thursday, nearly identical to one it filed with the Federal Elections Commission on May 29. It shows Sanders got less than $2,000 total for three speaking appearances since last fall, including $850 for appearing on the HBO talk show “Real Time With Bill Maher.” Sanders reported donating the speaking fees to Vermont charities.
He also got a $5,000-a-year pension from the city of Burlington for his time as mayor.
Sanders also listed 28 retirement fund accounts belonging to his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, worth between $194,000 and $735,000. The disclosure forms only ask for a range of values, such as between $1,001 and $15,000.
Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley and his wife, Catherine Curran O’Malley, last year earned a solid $270,000 in wages, plus a $61,000 pension from his time as mayor and council member in Baltimore. O’Malley is competing with Sanders to be the liberal alternative to the overwhelming Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Both men’s earning paled in comparison to Clinton’s. Her May financial disclosure form, showed that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, earned more than $25 million in speaking fees since the beginning of 2014.
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