The Politico - Bernie Sanders: Still A Maverick
By: Chris Graff
The following is an excerpt from "Dateline Vermont: Covering and uncovering the newsworthy stories that shaped a state -- and influenced a nation," by Chris Graff, former Vermont bureau chief for the Associated Press (Thistle Hill Publications, 2006).
Bernie Sanders jabs at the air, his flushed face a sharp contrast to his unruly white hair as he unleashes one of his patented attacks on Washington, the Congress and the president.
"The government that we have today in the White House, the House of Representatives with Tom DeLay, the Senate with Bill Frist, is the most right-wing, extremist government, perhaps in the history of the United States," he bellows at labor activists attending a May Day celebration in Barre's century-old Labor Hall, during his successful campaign for the Senate.
"Time after time they pass legislation that benefits the rich and the powerful, and they pass legislation that hurts the middle class, working people and low income people."
The crowd roars. They love it. This is Bernie at his best: one-part revivalist preacher, two parts theater, and an equal measure of passionate ideology, all served up with biting sarcasm. It is vintage Bernie. Literally. The words and message have not changed in more that thirty years. Tens of thousands of times in his still unmistakable Brooklyn accent he has decried as outrageous "the growing gap between the rich and the poor."
Standing in the back of the Labor Hall, I marveled at how far Sanders had come and how little his message had changed. Sixteen years after being elected to the U.S. House, he could still bring crowds to their feet with his Congress-bashing. In the process, he had become such a fixture in Vermont's political landscape the he had virtually lost his last name. Everywhere he goes, he is simply "Bernie."
When he first ran for the U.S. Senate -- in a special election in January 1972 -- he won a mere two percent of the vote. In 1974, when he again ran for the Senate, he garnered all of four percent. Sanders also ran twice for governor in the 1970s, always running under the banner of the leftist Liberty Union. For his efforts, he won one percent and six percent, respectively. Vermonters largely considered him an entertaining political gadfly. He was praised for his passion and his theatrics, but dismissed as a perennial candidate, a fringe candidate.
After his 1976 loss in the gubernatorial race, Sanders left the Liberty Union and appeared to give up politics. He produced a documentary on his hero Eugene Debs, founder of the American Socialist Party, a six-time candidate for president, a man whose political success and unwavering devotion to his ideas mirrored his own.
In 1980, a friend showed Sanders that while he had won only six percent of the statewide tally in 1976, he had doubled that percentage in Burlington; in some of the city's working class wards he had attracted sixteen percent. His friend, Richard Sugarman, suggested that if Sanders concentrated all of his energy on his hometown he might be able to defeat the five-term incumbent mayor, Democrat Gordon Paquette, in the March 1981 election. Sanders ran and ousted Paquette, then 64 and a former baker, by ten votes. He picked up support from the Burlington Patrolman's Association, which was quite a coup, and assembled an extremely diverse coalition.
The win may seem probable in hindsight, but no one saw it coming. And although Sanders ran as an independent, the national news media, including the AP, played up the fact that he considered himself a socialist. Sanders' victory won worldwide play in the media: Cartoonist Garry Trudeau devoted a Sunday edition of his "Doonesbury" cartoon to Sanders; soon people were referring to the city as "The People's Republic of Burlington."
A year later, three of Sanders' supporters won seats on the Council, which then reluctantly began to accept the fact that his election was not a fluke. Sanders won reelection bids in 1983,1985 and 1987.
Sanders ventured back into state politics in 1986 with (an unsuccessful) run for governor. In 1988, Sanders returned to statewide politics with a run for the U.S. House. This was the year when Vermonters began to look at Sanders as more than just a spoiler, and put personality ahead of party, allowing him to beat the Democratic nominee. With no incumbent in the race the contest was wide open, and Sanders had the advantage of having run previous statewide campaigns. This gave him confidence, a good organization from his 1986 gubernatorial bid and standing among the electorate.
Above all, though, Sanders gained from the strong, clear image he had instilled in the voters. His reputation as a fighter against the establishment had been carefully crafted in his terms as mayor and his 1986 gubernatorial campaign; his platform of forcing the wealthy and corporations to pay higher taxes was ingrained in the minds of the electorate. (On election night, after a see-saw battle, Sanders narrowly lost to Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Smith.) That night, though, was not the loss it seemed for Sanders; it was a turning point.
In 1990, Sanders won his House seat, defeating Smith by 16 points. With Sanders' victory came lots of national press attention but also some thorny questions as the (Democratic) leadership in the House tried to figure out what to do with him. It had been nearly half a century since the election of a true independent who did not affiliate with the Democratic or Republican parties after the election. At first the Democrats, upset with his harsh criticism of the party during the campaign, didn't want anything to do with Sanders. He was the odd man out: an independent in an institution that revolves around the two-party system; a socialist in a chamber dominated by moderates and conservatives; a freshman in a world that favors seniority. As abrasive as ever, his style clashed rudely in an institution that rewards collegiality.
Six months into his first term, I went down and spent a week in Washington to get a sense of how he was faring. I filled plenty of notebooks with criticism from members of Congress who were tired of Sanders' unrelenting attacks on them and on the institution. Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal Democrat, denounced Sanders as completely ineffective "because he offends just about everyone. His holier-than-thou attitude-saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else-really undercuts his effectiveness. To him, anybody who disagrees with his is a crook." Even Senators Jim Jeffords and Pat Leahy admitted to being upset with Sanders. Jeffords was the more outspoken, saying, "Obviously, I disagree with his style and I think he is counterproductive."
However, Sanders had his supporters, too. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass, said "this place needs to be shaken up," and Leon Panetta said of Sanders, "It's kind of refreshing to the institution; it's good for both parties to have a thorn in their side."
After (my) series (about this) ran in newspapers, Sanders said I had "overstepped the bounds of responsible journalism." In letters to newspapers around the state and to AP management, he argued that I had spoken only with mainstream members of Congress, "people I have been fighting for twenty years." I think Sanders overreacted to my stories but I can see why he did. What I wrote was accurate: he had campaigned as an outsider, he held the Congress and many of its members in low regard and he found the ways of Washington far more frustrating than he had ever imagined.
(As the years passed, however, Sanders became more of a player.) In 1999, I sat in on a meeting of the House Banking Committee as Sanders, a committee member, offered an amendment to HR21, a bill to create a disaster reinsurance fund that, in essence, would lessen the risks for insurance companies when catastrophes strike.
"Mr. Chairman," he said, "this amendment is simple and straightforward. All it does is replace the entire text of the bill." Laughter ripped through the cavernous Wright Patman Room, and then Sanders launched a frontal attack on the bill, claiming it "represents an unnecessary taxpayer bailout for the insurance industry and is a rip-off to the American consumer." The language is vintage Sanders, yet there was a difference. Sanders had two Republicans and one Democrat joining him as cosponsors. He had lined up support from a wide variety of groups, including the U.S. Business and Industry Council, the National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste. The Republican chairman of the committee called the amendment of the most important of the 18 before the panel. In the end Sanders lost 23-31, but watching him in action that day made it clear that he was no longer an outsider in the House.
Back in 1986, as Sanders campaigned for governor, he sat down with one of my reporters, John Donnelly, in a Barre restaurant. He talked about growing up in his working-class family in Brooklyn, and constant fights about money. Then he talked about his reasons for getting into politics.
"If you ask me what my dream is as a political person, it is to allow this state to do what no other state in the union has done: to stand up to the establishment, the big-monied people, the Democrats and Republicans and show the rest of the country that it can be done. If that happens, my life's work will have been successful."
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=268915