Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders received his first endorsement from a Congress member on Wednesday, courtesy of Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva.
Grijalva, a seven-term congressman from Tucson and co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is set to announce his support for Sanders’ campaign at a rally in Tucson on Friday, according to the Huffington Post.
Grijalva’s endorsement comes on the eve of the first Democratic debate and he said that it was Sanders’ unwavering voting consistency in the Senate over the years that drew his attention.
“People might or might not like what he has to say,” Grijalva said via an interview with the Guardian, “but the fact is he has said it repeatedly with people and it’s resonating with people, and I think his message is something that I wanted to reinforce.
Sanders, once considered a long shot in the Democratic-nomination race, has surged in polls in recent months thanks to a grassroots campaign that has seen him refuse money from Super PACS and big corporations. Sanders has caught up to frontrunner Hillary Clinton in important states such as Iowa and California, and now just trails Clinton by 12 percentage points in the polls, 35 to 47, according to the Sacramento Bee.
In the meantime, Grijalva, one of the leading progressives on Capitol Hill, said he is willing to do whatever it takes to help Sanders’ campaign.
“I am in it with Bernie for the long haul,” he said. “And if part of that includes some historic day when a guy who looks like an English lit professor whose class I dropped in college is standing up to get sworn in, that’ll be a special day.”