How Do You Think The Makeup Of Bernie Sanders Constituency Impacts Their Political Stances?

Lessons in Power

Bernie Sanders vs. The Machine

In 1981, he was elected mayor of Burlington. Only the urban center's hierarchy showed him that winning wasn't everything. So he learned how to fight dorsum.

Credit... Rob Swanson

Published Nov. 27, 2019 Updated Dec. 6, 2019

BURLINGTON, Vt. — The young woman on the political leaflet was smiling, only the bulletin printed beside her in assuming capital messages was severe. "The last 2 years," it said, "have shown that those who fabricated the revolution are not always the best to atomic number 82 after the coup."

To voters in Burlington, in 1983, the reference to Bernie Sanders was unmistakable.

What Democrats here were calling a insurrection was this: A young socialist had captured the mayor's part 2 years earlier by a margin of just x votes, upending the political order in a comfortable lakeside city of nigh 38,000. For decades, an old-school Democratic car had dominated municipal regime. In 1983, the party intended to reclaim command by assailing Mr. Sanders's "unkept promises."

But in his re-election campaign that yr, Mr. Sanders crushed the contest . Casting himself as a champion of the people against the establishment, Mr. Sanders summoned voters to the polls in unusual numbers. He triumphed over 2 opponents — one Democrat and ane Republican — by more than 20 pct points.

"No longer will they call my victory a fluke," Mr. Sanders, then 41, wrote in a alphabetic character after the election, to a city-planning expert at Cornell Academy.

Answering a congratulatory message from a correspondent in Oregon, Mr. Sanders wrote, "Socialism, in this Metropolis, is no longer something to exist feared, simply rather to be discussed and hopefully understood."

In the 2020 Democratic master, Mr. Sanders, now 78, is crusading for his ideas across a vastly larger territory than the urban center of Burlington. He is drawing crowds in the thousands, sometimes with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a swain democratic socialist, beside him. Less than three months before the Iowa caucuses, polls bear witness Mr. Sanders within striking distance of victory in both Iowa and New Hampshire. On Friday, when Mr. Sanders rebuked Michael R. Bloomberg for pouring his personal wealth into the 2020 race, it was with a confident pronouncement that captured the ethos of his ain entrada: "If you can't build grass-roots back up for your candidacy, yous have no business running for president," Mr. Sanders said.

Listen to 'The Daily': The Candidates: Bernie Sanders

We spoke with the Vermont senator nearly his journey from the fringes of American politics to the forefront — and the ideas that shaped him along the mode.

transcript

transcript

Mind to 'The Daily': The Candidates: Bernie Sanders

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced past Alexandra Leigh Young and Jessica Cheung, and edited by Lisa Tobin and Paige Cowett

We spoke with the Vermont senator about his journeying from the fringes of American politics to the forefront — and the ideas that shaped him along the mode.

bernie sanders

Hi.

michael barbaro

Hello.

bernie sanders

How are you lot?

michael barbaro

Senator, Michael Barbaro.

bernie sanders

Nice to run across you, Michael.

michael barbaro

Great pleasance.

jessica cheung

Hi, Jessica Cheung.

bernie sanders

Jessica. Dainty to see you. Where would you lot like me?

michael barbaro

Very dainty to meet you, Michael Barbaro. Then, Senator Sanders, my colleague Alex Burns told me that to understand your political career, and your presidential campaign today, we accept to become dorsum to the first time that you won elected office as mayor of Burlington in 1981. So that'due south —

bernie sanders

The New York Times got it correct. Every once in a while.

michael barbaro

So that's what I want to ask you near.

bernie sanders

All right, at that place you go.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I'one thousand Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily."

archived recording

Burlington is the largest city in Vermont. Situated as it is on Lake Champlain with the Adirondack Mountains view, it'due south a lovely, lovely spot. We'd like you to come across its new mayor. Mayor Sanders got a lot of attending recently, non only with his x vote victory, merely mostly considering he is a socialist.

michael barbaro

Part ii in our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the acme four Democratic candidates for president. Today —

archived recording (bernie sanders)

The people who are living in all of the Burlington housing authorization developments, both the senior citizen development and the low income housing projects are going to be receiving the lowest cable boob tube bills in the land of Vermont.

michael barbaro

Bernie Sanders.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Ronald Reagan and his billionaire friends do non stand for America, simply we do. Lastly, I desire to touch upon an event that dear to my heart, and that is the upshot of affordable wellness care. The people of Burlington voted overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly in support of Congress moving forward to constitute a national health care arrangement. I recollect that is exactly how this country is going to have to keep that issue.

michael barbaro

It's Friday, December six.

Alex Burns, why this moment?

alex burns

Bernie Sanders is such an unusual character in American politics, as a lifelong socialist and left wing activist who has endured for decades every bit a major political figure, and who has become a leading presidential candidate. And to empathise how he got from, really, the fringes of American politics to the absolute forefront, y'all take to become back to this moment in the early 1980s where he becomes mayor of Burlington, where he figures out how to take those ideas and actually win elections with them, and so govern. This is a catamenia I've been spending a lot of time on in my own reporting because it'south just such a vital formative feel for Sanders. And then the story starts with the turn of the 1970s every bit Bernie Sanders arrives in Vermont with a whole lot of left wing ideas, not a whole lot of local connections, and links up with a new marginal political political party called the Freedom Union.

bernie sanders

And that political party had been formed around opposition to the war in Vietnam, and in the fight for economic justice. It'due south a very pocket-sized party in a very small state.

michael barbaro

Bernie Sanders starts showing upwardly to Liberty Union meetings, and the political party identifies him as the man they want to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 1971.

bernie sanders

And it was a very interesting entrada, and and so along, so on. I got two pct of the vote.

michael barbaro

He loses that election, but then he has gotten the electoral bug.

bernie sanders

A year afterwards, there was the full general ballot. I ran for governor of the state, I got one percent.

michael barbaro

He loses once again.

bernie sanders

Then I ran for Senate again against Pat Leahy, as Leahy ofttimes reminds me, and I got four pct.

michael barbaro

And again, he loses. I'grand seeing a pattern here.

bernie sanders

Yes.

michael barbaro

It is loss, after loss, after loss. And while he'due south running and losing, he has a series of odd jobs.

bernie sanders

I was doing some writing. I was banging nails, doing a trivial bit of carpentry work.

michael barbaro

He also had a chore putting together newsreels and educational motion picture strips about history for school kids.

bernie sanders

That'south before video. For younger people, there was a thing called film strips. I won't get through what they were, photographs and sound. And I did most of the work myself, had a petty flake of assist, photography and so forth. It was lot of fun, actually.

michael barbaro

He sells these films to schools in the region, and he too spends time putting together a projection that he'due south personally quite invested in and proud of.

archived recording

If you are the average American who watches television 40 hours a week, you have probably heard of such important people equally Kojak and Wonder Adult female. Strangely enough, however, nobody has told you virtually Eugene Debs, one of the almost important Americans of the 20th century.

michael barbaro

Which is a film most the life of the legendary American socialist leader, Eugene Debs.

bernie sanders

Debs was a very great American. He was one of the original founders of industrial unionism, socialist party candidate for president half dozen times, somebody I admired a whole lot.

archived recording (eugene debs)

The ruling class has always taught and trained you to believe it to exist your patriotic duty to go to state of war, and to accept yourself slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world, y'all the people have never had a voice in declaring war.

michael barbaro

So throughout the 1970s, he is this activist educator who is running campaign after campaign, and losing every time. He'south not really developing a professional person or political career for himself in Vermont. Merely in the city of Burlington —

bernie sanders

In 1980 or then, some friends of mine came upwards to me. And they said, you know, there's going to be a mayor'south election coming up in '81. And you know what, we checked the records, and yous did pretty well running as a Liberty Marriage candidate. You got actually 12 percent of the vote in some of the working class districts in Burlington.

michael barbaro

So two per centum, or iv percent, or six percent —

bernie sanders

That was statewide. Merely in Burlington, we did better.

michael barbaro

Y'all were doing better.

bernie sanders

Aye. So nosotros got a bunch of people together, and they said, O.K., we'll do it.

archived recording

Bernie Sanders, a Brooklyn built-in self-described socialist running for mayor for the first time in 1981, running against a Democratic erstwhile guard that had run the city for a decade.

michael barbaro

When Sanders becomes a candidate for mayor, he is facing off against a powerful Democratic institution. Burlington at this point, for decades has been substantially a ane party town with a relatively conservative Democratic ruling clique that has just had a hammerlock on city politics. The incumbent mayor is non seen by anybody as vulnerable, to the bespeak that the Republicans don't even field a candidate confronting him. He'due south also upwardly against, just a civilization of apathy when information technology comes to municipal elections. People by and large don't evidence upward to vote for mayor, or for other city offices. So Bernie Sanders and this kind of ragtag group of academics and activists and intellectuals ring together to try to figure out how to fissure a city ballot in a place where nobody like them has ever won before.

bernie sanders

You would literally not believe if I told you how little we knew almost politics. At the end of the day, I mean, existent politics. It'south ane thing to run for statewide role knowing you're not going to win and get on our radio prove and talk well-nigh issues, which I could do, but the nitty-gritty of politics.

michael barbaro

So equally a newcomer to metropolis politics, Bernie Sanders runs a different kind of entrada from the campaigns he'south run earlier. This isn't about xxx,000 foot ideological issues, similar when he was a protestation candidate for the Senate.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Ruth, you lot're a volunteer worker at the old North stop nutrient co-op here in Burlington.

archived recording

Right. We're on inability, social security.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

You got cut from $131 to —

archived recording

$48.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

And what was the justification for that? How do they expect you lot to live on the divergence?

archived recording

They don't care.

michael barbaro

This is a ground level entrada that's waged over really physical kitchen table issues that are relevant, he hopes, to a wide array of constituencies in the metropolis that feel like they've been left out by the existing ability construction.

bernie sanders

We had a lot of back up in, for case, depression income housing projects from people were getting a raw deal from the city that ran the projects. Nosotros had support from environmental groups. Nosotros had back up from ane grouping in the south end of the urban center. There was going to be a major highway going right through the neighborhood, and they said, we don't similar that.

michael barbaro

So Sanders is gaining some real support in this race. He's non a niggling candidate, simply yet, the powers that exist in Burlington practise not see him equally a threat to win this election. Permit me talk nigh ballot night. What was the story of that night for you?

bernie sanders

Well, when I walked in on election day, I was of 2 opinions. Number one, that nosotros would lose very heavily. And the newspapers, some guy, a paper writer was covering information technology, he said, the odds of Sanders winning are about 100 to one. That was literally what they wrote. And then either we were doing something magical, or we would lose overwhelmingly. What I did not anticipate is that on election dark, I recollect the results were, nosotros were ahead by 14 votes. And later on the recount, 10 votes. That, I did non expect.

archived recording

Many people in Burlington are still in a state of shock post-obit that city's most stunning political upset in retention last night.

michael barbaro

The press reports from election dark draw him every bit stunned, and then elated that he wins. And he wins by the absolute narrowest of margins, just ten votes.

alex burns

Ten votes.

archived recording

Bernard Sanders, i of the founders of the Liberty Union Political party, and a consistent loser in previous quests for elective office, was now the big winner. Considered past many to be unelectable because of his and so-called radical views, Mr. Sanders put together an unlikely coalition of supporters and edged the ten year incumbent Gordon Paquette.

michael barbaro

So your strategy had worked. When you take office, how did becoming an elected official, the day to day reality of it, match your expectations of the power of winning this office and being mayor?

bernie sanders

Well, we had a very unique experience.

alex burns

Bernie Sanders has pulled off an boggling feat. He has upended the city establishment, he has become a socialist mayor in the United States at the height of the Common cold War. But what happens next is he runs into a brick wall of political opposition. At that place is a body in Burlington, the Board of Aldermen. Nosotros would phone call information technology a metropolis council. There are 13 members, 11 of them are either Democrats or Republicans, but their party label matters less than the fact that they are opposed to Bernie Sanders. He comes in, the powerful Democrats and the powerful Republicans both essentially say, he should not be the mayor of the metropolis, and he volition not exist the mayor of the city for very long. Because nosotros're going to make sure that he can't get anything done.

michael barbaro

People were trying to sabotage you lot?

bernie sanders

Trying to demolition me, yes. They were trying to sabotage me. The start thing they did was to fire my secretarial assistant.

michael barbaro

They have the power to fire your secretary?

bernie sanders

Yeah, they did.

michael barbaro

So they reject his secretarial assistant. They take it back pretty apace, simply the impairment to the relationship is kind of done. Non only do the board of Aldermen mess with his ability to hire a secretary, they reject all of his nominees for the top jobs in the city, city clerk, city treasurer, city attorney.

bernie sanders

And they made me run the city for the start year with exactly the administration of the guy I had browbeaten. You know, it's like —

michael barbaro

You're being neutered.

bernie sanders

Aye. So it's like, y'all know, Donald Trump running his administration with Barack Obama'south appointees.

alex burns

So for actually his first full yr every bit mayor, he has a somewhat ornamental role.

michael barbaro

How are how are y'all thinking about this challenge?

bernie sanders

Well, their attitude, what they had said, and one of their leaders said, well, look. Bernie Sanders is a fluke. That was the word they used, and they said —

michael barbaro

Your brand of politics, everything most you, they idea was only a fluke.

bernie sanders

Right, this is an accident that should never have happened. And we will stonewall him in the first yr, people will come across that he can't accomplish anything, then nosotros'll go back to the sometime means.

michael barbaro

They're going to bulldoze you from role.

bernie sanders

Yeah. Well, it was a savage year. Then what we had to do was literally form a parallel city government without any money. I mean, we didn't, couldn't pay everyone, just nosotros brought together a group of stiff supporters and we had them helping us working on legislation and ideas. And we did everything that nosotros could while nosotros were beingness absolutely opposed past the Autonomous and Republicans on the board of Aldermen. So we organized at the grass-roots level, we mobilize people. Our job was to get people involved in the political process.

michael barbaro

How did you do that?

bernie sanders

Well, I'll tell you lot how we did information technology. Fifty-fifty before I took office, we had meetings on issues that people were concerned about that had been ignored for a very long time. Nosotros said, we believe in arts. You lot know, a city has got to be vital and alive. What do nosotros practice about the arts? What do we do well-nigh economic development? What practice we do about women'southward rights? And then we ended upwards storming a quango on Arts, a council on women, a council on youth. We started what we called neighborhood planning associations, which meant we gave local neighborhoods, each ward had a certain amount of money and they spent it however they wanted. So we tried to democratize it, and nosotros brought people into the procedure. So information technology wasn't me saying, we're going to do A, B and C. These were people who themselves were now empowered.

michael barbaro

So you lot're finding a way to essentially circumvent these aldermen who think you lot're a fluke, and think they can cake y'all past literally tapping into —

bernie sanders

Right.

michael barbaro

More voters, more than people. When did you know that this strategy was actually working?

bernie sanders

Well, when hundreds of people would show upwards at city quango meetings and demand our calendar. We were fighting for an calendar, it was being blocked past the urban center quango. So people were upset about it, and here's the interesting thing: We have elections for mayor then every two years, simply half the board of Aldermen comes up on the odd year.

michael barbaro

Then in 1982, one year afterward Sanders becomes mayor, seven of the 13 members of the board of aldermen are upwardly for re-election.

bernie sanders

Substantially, there was a referendum on my assistants.

michael barbaro

These elections became a chance for Mayor Sanders to go directly to the voters and ask them to replace these intransigent members of the board of aldermen with people who are friendly to him and supportive of his ideas.

bernie sanders

Nosotros ran candidates in nigh every ward in the urban center. I probably take never worked then hard in my life. I knocked on most every door in the city with the candidates that we were running with. And this is the winter time in Vermont, so we're talking about 10 below nil, in zero conditions. And on election night, the turnout was phenomenal for a non-mayor's race, it was just off the charts. In v — if my retention is correct, in the five wards that we ran in, nosotros won outright three of the wards, in all of the working grade areas.

And here is the most heady affair about all of this. If you go back to the basement of City Hall and cheque the old records in Burlington, what y'all'll discover is that between 1979, that was the previous ballot before I won, and two years later when I was running for re-election nosotros doubled voter turnout.

michael barbaro

He'southward right, voter turnout really did ascent in Burlington when Sanders got involved in metropolis politics. And some of that is almost him and his bulletin and his political organization. Some of it is just having contested elections, elections where people file to run against the people who are already sitting in public function. When you take two choices rather than one, then yep, more people evidence upwards to make a selection.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Good evening. We're recording this on Fri, March 5th, and we've decided to get out of City Hall, get out of the role. And we're hither on the starting time flooring the Burlington Square Mall.

michael barbaro

And he continues to engage and attempt to inspire voters in this aforementioned way, getting out in the community. He's a highly visible mayor.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

And I call up what we'll do is accept some informal discussions with Vermonters equally they walk past the states, and every bit we can grab them. And we'll see if nosotros tin can get their views on some of the important bug of the day. Simply before nosotros practise —

michael barbaro

He creates a local television show called "Bernie Speaks With the Community," where he is just out there and connected to your average voter.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Oops, oh, here we go.

archived recording

Hi, Shannon.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Shannon, do you lot live in Burlington, Shannon?

archived recording

Yeah.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

O.Chiliad. So how are things going with yous?

archived recording

Pretty expert. I was just wondering, my mother had this idea for an indoor/outdoor amusement park by the waterfront, and she wanted — and I desire to know if, is there anything going to exist done about information technology?

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Well, I tin't say for certain that something will be done immediately. I remember it is a proficient thought, and interestingly enough, your mother mentioned —

michael barbaro

It'southward a highly unusual approach for a municipal politico, and especially in a city where the mayor had not been that kind of man almost town previous.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

O.Yard. The next person that we've kidnapped hither off the streets for a few words is Jodie Baggerly. Jodie, welcome.

archived recording (jodie baggerly)

Well, thank you. One matter I want to appreciate, existence a disabled person, is the petty discount nosotros get on our cable TVs, because I think it'southward a positive point to take educational programs to be able to picket and fill up our minds at periods when nosotros are unable to go out.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Let me simply jump in and remind our viewers. What Jodie is talking well-nigh is, the city negotiated with the Mountain Cable Visitor —

michael barbaro

So Senator Sanders, in cursory, what are the lessons of this moment for yous?

bernie sanders

Lessons of this moment is that winning politics is grass-roots politics, that winning politics is developing coalitions of working people, of low income people, of women, of environmentalists. And so coalition is, we do it from the lesser on up, and we ended upward in my years as mayor taking on everybody.

michael barbaro

Nosotros'll exist correct back.

[music]

michael barbaro

So Alex, in Sanders'south telling, in the confront of total political opposition and stonewalling, his solution is to substantially do what got him political power in the outset place, which is go to the people, talk to the people, e'er the people.

alex burns

That'south his political make equally mayor, much as it's his political make now. And in Burlington, it'south an approach that really works for him. It establishes him equally a legitimate city executive with an independent power base who cannot just be treated equally an interloper in Metropolis Hall. It'southward also the offset of a couple stages in Mayor Sanders' campaign to reinvent Burlington city politics. And if the first part of that is most really engaging with city politics at the ground level, the side by side stage after he's been mayor for a couple of years, is to look way across Burlington and take on big national and international political problems, and connect them back to the local level.

archived recording

If I were the president of the largest bank in Burlington, I'd be real nervous about yous.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

Well, they may be, they may exist. But I recollect — and they are. But I think what we've often talked nearly also, is that my powers equally mayor are in many means limited. And I accept my visions every bit to what life should be in Vermont, in Burlington, and in the The states, but nosotros are going to speak out, though, on national and international problems which affect the city of Burlington. For example, obviously, nosotros're very concerned near Mr. Reagan's policies which are impacting devastatingly on low income and working people. But we know what our powers are within the urban center of Burlington.

michael barbaro

And then Senator Sanders, during this period y'all start talking about national issues. You lot start talking about President Reagan, his economic policy. Y'all start talking about strange policy. You send messages to the leaders of Nippon expressing regret for the 2 bombs that were dropped on that land by the U.S. What was your thinking? As y'all're building this coalition locally, you start talking about problems beyond the borders of Burlington. And what is your thinking —

bernie sanders

Well, permit's be articulate. 90 plus percentage of our energy was dealing with local issues like reforming the police department and paving the streets. We brought a minor league baseball team into Burlington, Vermont. 95, 98 percent of our work was locally, doing what mayors are supposed to practice. Only as part of empowering people, what nosotros besides believed is it was important to think globally and act locally. So if we were spending a whole lot of money in Washington under Reagan, investing in military spending, or giving tax breaks to the rich, that impacted the city of Burlington. We are mayors, we demand money to assistance us with housing. We need money to help usa with roads and infrastructure, and withal Washington is spending this coin on the armed forces, or they're busy invading another country, or whatever they're doing. We should exist speaking upwards on those problems.

archived recording (bernie sanders)

The question is whether we use the incredible wealth and natural resources and intelligence of our society to create a decent standard of living, a decent life for all of our people in this state and abroad, or practise we develop the greatest armed services machine for killing in the history of the earth. That's what the selection is.

bernie sanders

This was in the middle of the Cold War, and we started a sister-city program. I know the, some of the right wing media misinterprets this. But what nosotros did is, I took a group of about a dozen people from Burlington to Yaroslavl in the old Soviet Marriage.

archived recording

[SINGING]

bernie sanders

We had hockey teams coming out, we had doctors coming in and out, we had kids coming in and out. It actually — I dearest the thought of sister-city programs, and it worked phenomenally well.

archived recording

[SINGING] This state is your land, this land is my land —

bernie sanders

And it involved a lot of people. And so the kids began to learn about Russia, and I happened to believe and then, and I believe now, that if we're going to bring peace to the world, we demand a lot of cultural exchanges, we need a lot of youth exchanges. In fact, I recently proposed taking i-10th of one percentage of the military machine budget and putting it into cultural exchanges, which I think is a very good investment.

archived recording

[SINGING] Your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York islands. From the scarlet woods forests —

archived recording (bernie sanders)

I had an experience this last summer, I was invited by the regime of Nicaragua to attend the 6th anniversary of their revolution. And they must have had four or 500,000 people out there listening to speeches, and the horrible thought that I had actually sunk my stomach, was that kids in my ain urban center, immature kids, working class kids, might be asked by this president to go to Nicaragua to kill and go killed. And it was a horrible idea.

michael barbaro

Some of these endeavors were relatively bold. At a certain point, you get to Nicaragua. Y'all stop up coming together with the leader of the Sandinistas. And I — oh, no. I'chiliad non worried virtually any —

bernie sanders

No, I'm just —

michael barbaro

Oh, y'all're worried about time?

bernie sanders

Yeah, nosotros're running. Yes, we are running — how are we doing on fourth dimension?

michael barbaro

Five more than minutes?

bernie sanders

I retrieve we're probably going to have to end it right at present.

michael barbaro

Oh. No, no, no. This is not a — don't cease it on this question if that's the event.

bernie sanders

Well, you know, the effect is —

michael barbaro

Trust me, this is not — all I was going to asking you was, how exercise events like that connect to voters in Burlington? In your mind —

bernie sanders

Good, absolutely. Very skillful question. Well, I'll tell you lot why —

michael barbaro

How does coming together with an international leader like that —

bernie sanders

I'll tell y'all why it does. Because I believe we accept to empower people. One of the things we did is, nosotros said to people, speak out on national and international issues. Yep, the mayor of the city of Burlington can't determine the defence budget. Merely if we rally people all over the country speaking out on these problems, and then the members of Congress and U.S. senators volition hear that. And so to answer your question, this is merely another machinery that we had to say to people, you lot have a vocalization. Practise you think we should be spending more money on nuclear weapons? Vote on information technology. Talk nearly it. So all of this has to do with empowering people to empathize that in a republic, they tin can determine the hereafter.

michael barbaro

Alex, what do you brand of that?

alex burns

That is actually the essence of the Bernie Sanders approach to politics, that the most important matter a political leader tin can exercise is give voice to people's deepest concerns and frustrations, and encourage people to requite vox to it themselves. And if there is a gap between what that political leader is expressing or channeling, and what he can really accomplish, it's most irrelevant, that the human activity of expression and engagement is the well-nigh important affair. And what happens when yous draw people in on an issue like climate change, or the Reagan administration's policies in Central America, is they become politically activated in a fashion that then transforms politics closer to domicile at the local level.

michael barbaro

And Sanders did eventually articulate what you're describing, but not before he got frustrated with me and seemed to betoken he might end the interview when I mentioned Nicaragua. What exercise you retrieve that that's about?

alex burns

Well first of all this is a really charged moment in his early career and in American politics. There has been a revolution in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas are a left fly revolutionary movement that overthrows a repressive regime. They are seen as unsafe past the Reagan administration because they are so left wing, and the Republicans in Washington prop upward a vicious correct wing militia to fight the Sandinistas. Bernie Sanders is one of many Americans on the left who get involved at that indicate in demonstrating in favor of the Sandinistas, or against Ronald Reagan. Except Sanders takes it considerably further when he actually goes to Nicaragua, shakes easily with Ortega himself. This is a story that someone in Sanders's position probably ought to exist able to explicate. Or at least you would think he would experience comfortable explaining information technology. And what I find somewhat confounding as a reporter is how much he resents even the prompt to go into his thinking at the fourth dimension and to reverberate a little bit on some of the things about his support for the Sandinistas that may not expect as justifiable in retrospect. He doesn't desire to practice that. My sense is that, at the middle of it for him, is this sense that fifty-fifty asking the question is a kind of red baiting, that it reflects the mode the political institution — and he very much lumps the media in with the political institution, is out to become him. Much as it was in Burlington, much as he believes it was in the 2016 entrada. This is a guy who in his early days as mayor was described by a fellow elected official equally representing the fungus of socialism. He is somebody who is very, very sensitive to anything he perceives as the charge that he is not merely a populist, not only very liberal, but this wildly exterior the mainstream unsafe radical. And when you raise Nicaragua, I do think that's the nerve that it hits.

michael barbaro

So that in that location's no misunderstanding, those who listen and ask about Nicaragua, I want to give you a take a chance to make sure that there'southward no confusion for any listener who'due south casually checking in.

bernie sanders

All correct —

michael barbaro

The question is, was at that place annihilation about Daniel Ortega that —

bernie sanders

Permit me only say this.

michael barbaro

You knew at the time that gave you pause.

bernie sanders

Well, what gave me pause was that the United States at that time, every bit you may retrieve. I don't know, do you recollect —

michael barbaro

I was a student.

bernie sanders

Who the president was before Ortega? A dictator named Somoza who was a dictator, a very bad guy supported past the United states of america. Then Ortega came to ability, the Sandinistas came to power, and the Us intended to do what it had done in many instances. You are aware the United States has a habit of overthrowing governments in Latin America.

michael barbaro

Yes.

bernie sanders

I didn't think that was a practiced idea. Didn't remember it was a good idea then, and I didn't recollect it was a adept thought now. Then we worked against American intervention. Then nosotros went there to say, every bit role of a national move, that the Us should not exist involved.

michael barbaro

Correct.

bernie sanders

About overthrowing small governments.

michael barbaro

And for the record, in '85, were y'all enlightened of whatsoever human rights issues or abuses by Ortega?

bernie sanders

Well, we were aware that this was a very controversial moment, having taken over from a dictatorship. We were also aware that the United States at that time was supporting many governments in Latin America who were much more vicious than Ortega was.

alex burns

What you hear there is such an evasiveness almost assessing the Ortega authorities on its own merits, that he really wants to talk nigh his advocacy around Nicaragua exclusively as a repudiation of Reagan, and not as an endorsement of what was going on there. And if you look at his comments and activities at the time, that's not quite right. He was more explicitly supportive of what the Sandinistas were doing and so just going there as a sort of anti-interventionist advocate. Only in fairness to Sanders, this was non a fringe position at the time. Support for the Sandinistas has obviously not necessarily aged also every bit Bernie Sanders might have expected information technology to politically, and that'due south I call up where you hear his real discomfort talking nigh it in the context of this campaign.

michael barbaro

But in taking this trip and talking most information technology the way he does, he is living his creed, essentially.

alex burns

Exactly. It is using all the levers of his ability and public influence equally an elected official to weigh in on this subject area that is about as distant, literally, from Burlington as you lot can get.

[music]

michael barbaro

As this strategy is being deployed, you're winning your 4th term every bit mayor. And you go on, successfully this time, to run for statewide function. The House, the Senate, and and so, of course, yous run for president 2016, now once again in 2020. In each of these campaigns and each of these moments, yous're building larger and more than powerful coalitions of voters. And given that history and your success in doing that, what do you think is the big lesson from this early phase? Why do yous think it is that when we went to Alex Burns and asked him this question, and he said, you have to go dorsum to '81, yous have to get dorsum to Burlington to understand Senator Sanders and this entrada and this moment. Why is he right, why practice we take to get back to that race and that moment?

bernie sanders

Politics in America has been very much from the top on down. Yous even so read articles in The New York Times where wealthy donors gathered today at a hotel to express business concern almost the Democratic candidates. Who cares about wealthy donors? We take over 1.1 million Americans who have made donations to our entrada. And they're not wealthy, these are working course people. They're teachers, they're workers at Amazon, they're workers at Walmart. What I believe then and what I believe now, the way you transform society is from the lesser on up. You talk about issues that are relevant to working people, issues that are relevant to low income people, issues that are relevant to young people, and yous abound the voter base. So what I pointed out to you, maybe the most important thing that we did, is from 1979 to 1983, we doubled, doubled the number of people voting. And what we're trying to exercise in this campaign correct at present —

michael barbaro

Is parallel.

bernie sanders

Is to significantly increase the voter turnout by talking to people who don't vote. In Burlington, what happened is low income and working course people saw that government could work for them. And they said, oh my God, I never knew that. My kids at present have a program, we accept an after school plan they didn't have. We have a kid care center nosotros didn't have. Our streets are getting paved, snowfall is getting moved. I didn't know that — nosotros're going to become out, we're going to support Bernie, and nosotros're going to support the candidates that he wants for Board of Aldermen. And at present what we take to practise in this state, which has one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any major country on world, is to reach out to those working people, accomplish out to those young people. And when they start participating in the political procedure, that is the political revolution.

michael barbaro

If you become president, the question volition be, sure, you talked nearly national and international issues when you were mayor, just there was no real expectation that you could change the course of events every bit a single mayor of a town in Burlington. If y'all get president, that expectation volition exist real and urgent and present. So are we to sympathise that if you run into political obstacles every bit president, that your strategy will be to call upon the expanded electorate that you have created and turned that into a political strength that you would then, all of what you did in Burlington with the Board of Aldermen?

bernie sanders

Yes. Well, information technology'due south not an if. That is exactly what is going to happen. When we talk most the need to join the residuum of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to every person through a Medicare for all, single-payer programme, the only fashion that'due south going to happen is when millions of people stand upwardly and have on the insurance companies and the drug companies. When nosotros talk about transforming our energy system to relieve the planet from the devastation, absolute destruction of the global crisis regarding climate change, the only manner that happens is when millions of people stand up up to take on the fossil fuel industry. So on all of the issues we are talking about, that'due south what the political revolution is about. It's saying that we're going to mobilize millions of people to stand up for an calendar that works for working families. And when they exercise that, there will exist no stopping them. We will be able to create a government and an economic system that works for all, non just the ane percent.

michael barbaro

Alex, what do you retrieve of that theory?

alex burns

Well, the coalition that he'south trying to build every bit a presidential candidate is such an echo of what he accomplished in Burlington. And his theory is, they are going to show upwards for him in a style they wouldn't show up for whatsoever other candidate because he is speaking to their concerns directly. And Sanders has enough of reason to expect that might really exist the instance. He has charted this remarkable ascent every bit a national political figure on the strength of this coalition and mainstreamed a ready of socialist and quasi-socialist ideas that were seen every bit really exterior the mainstream when he started campaigning on them decades ago, into the center of one of the country'south 2 major political parties. The question for someone like Bernie Sanders is, does that theory work in a general election on a national scale? Can you really bring in that many new people into the political process where in that location already are a whole lot of people who vote, and who accept pretty vested interests in the context of an American election? Can you speak in the way he does to the concerns of working form people without alienating millions of people who already vote for the Autonomous Party, and don't necessarily share that globe view? And could you, as the president, utilise that exact same playbook, that verbal same coalition to master Washington and interruption a Republican Senate in the same manner that he transformed Burlington and broke a city quango?

[music]

michael barbaro

Alex, thanks.

alex burns

Thank you.

bernie sanders

Thanks very much.

michael barbaro

I wish you the best. Cheers very much for your time.

[music]

michael barbaro

"The Daily" is made by Theo Balcomb, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Alexandra Leigh Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Adizah Eghan, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Jazmín Aguilera, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Sayre Quevedo, Monika Evstatieva, Neena Pathak, Dave Shaw and Dan Powell. Our theme music is past Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Stella Tan, Lauren Jackson and Julia Simon.

[music]

That'southward it for "The Daily." I'm Michael Barbaro. See yous on Monday.

Many Democratic leaders remain skeptical that Mr. Sanders tin can win the nomination or, if he gets that far, the general election. But Mr. Sanders is confident in his approach — because, he says, information technology has worked for him earlier, starting time with the battles in Burlington that taught him the meaning of power, and running through his clash with Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

If his political ideology had long been clear, it was in his early on years as mayor that Mr. Sanders refined his methods for accumulating and using influence, according to a review of hundreds of personal messages, city documents and newspaper articles from Mr. Sanders's time every bit mayor, and interviews with more than than a dozen people involved in Burlington politics in the 1980s, including Mr. Sanders.

By that March election in 1983, the get-go time in his life that he was running as an incumbent , Mr. Sanders had forged the theory of political change that still guides him. Information technology is defined by direct confrontation with conservative institutions and legislators, blunt talk almost economic grievance and an unrelenting try to inspire demoralized, lower-income voters with promises of true societal transformation. He believed that simply a sweeping vision of a improve system could summon the kind of grass-roots mobilization he needed to accomplish fifty-fifty more than modest goals .

Mr. Sanders never won total command of the Burlington regime: The board of aldermen — a part-time municipal legislature with xiii members, elected to staggered 2-year terms — would regularly restrain his ambitions.

But past the time he won his 2nd term by a landslide, Mr. Sanders had accomplished a durable upper hand in city politics. In an interview at his home in Burlington this fall, Mr. Sanders said that if elected president he would replicate his mayoral strategy "on a somewhat larger scale." Seated in his sunbathed backyard, with a view of distant mountains, Mr. Sanders recalled with apparently satisfaction that when he took on the local political establishment, voters had taken his side in overpowering numbers.

"What that tells me is that if regime does respond to the needs of working people, they will come out and participate," Mr. Sanders said.

Much as he mobilized voters confronting his adversaries in Burlington, Mr. Sanders said that as president he would personally target senators who blocked policies like "Medicare for All," even in the nearly Republican-leaning states. By showing that the working grade had a fighting president on its side, Mr. Sanders predicted he could transform impoverished conservative states similar Westward Virginia and Mississippi, which President Trump carried easily in 2016, into far more progressive ones.

"The idea that working-class people are voting for somebody similar Donald Trump is abysmal," Mr. Sanders said, "and it speaks to the Democratic Party'due south failure to speak to and address the crises facing working-class people all over this land."

Mr. Sanders conceded that he would be up against huge forces of opposition: "The Republican National Committee is not the Democratic Political party of Burlington, Vt., in 1981," he said. And he indicated in the interview that former President Barack Obama had raised questions near his plans for mass mobilization.

But in Burlington, even people who exercise not share Mr. Sanders'south worldview say his tactics worked.

David Thelander , a former Republican alderman, said Mr. Sanders had upended the city by enlisting "underserved customs members who, historically, felt left out of the political process."

"Bernie and his progressives simply kind of lit a fire in sure wards of the city, and really displaced the Democratic machine," Mr. Thelander said.

Maurice Mahoney, a Democrat who served on the board early in Mr. Sanders's tenure, said the party had underestimated Mr. Sanders's gifts for political organizing and channeling indignation, and paid a price for it.

"He does play the victim card very well," Mr. Mahoney said, "considering, of form, information technology'due south Bernie confronting all the big boys."

Insurgency and Obstruction

Until 1981, Mr. Sanders had never experienced electoral victory.

As a young transplant from Brooklyn, he entered Vermont politics in the 1970s, mounting a series of protest campaigns for Senate and governor in a rural state that was so deeply Republican. He ran under the imprint of a left-wing party, the Liberty Union, that embraced causes similar nationalizing industry, legalizing drugs and abolishing laws restricting ballgame . Mr. Sanders drew observe as a novelty simply never came close to winning.

Epitome

Credit... Donna Lite/Associated Press

That changed in the new decade. A friend who taught at the University of Vermont observed to Mr. Sanders that even in his losing campaigns, he had fared well in Burlington, a city that was growing as a trickle of young liberals left the cities of the Northeast for the Greenish Mountains. Mr. Sanders announced a claiming to Mayor Gordon Paquette, a long-serving Democrat, attacking local emblems of inequality and economic grievance — a proposed condo development on Lake Champlain, for one, and a mayoral programme to hike property taxes that Mr. Sanders called regressive. He won with 43 pct of the vote in a 3-way race.

And then, at age 39, Mr. Sanders learned that victory did non always bring power.

For a modest metropolis, Burlington had an impressively tangled bureaucracy, with layers of commissions constraining the mayor. On the lath of aldermen, 11 of 13 members were aligned against Mr. Sanders, ensuring an alliance of Democrats and Republicans that could thwart his proposals and override his veto. That bipartisan bloc saw Mr. Sanders every bit a fire-breathing amateur and viewed the people he picked for jobs like city clerk and city treasurer in like terms.

Mr. Mahoney said Mr. Sanders initially "didn't have a clue." The aldermen felt ambushed by his unexpected policy demands, and rattled by his tempestuous manner that more than than once involved storming out of meetings.

"Coming in, he was but very uneducated," Mr. Mahoney said, recalling that Mr. Sanders would scramble the council's agenda and inject remote problems into urban center politics. "We'd go our packets on a Friday, and the agenda and everything is included there. Bernie would accept a news conference on Monday and add some huge new affair, similar we're going to be supporting Daniel Ortega in a resolution."(At the fourth dimension, Mr. Ortega was leader of the Nicaraguan revolutionary grouping the Sandinistas.)

When Mr. Sanders submitted his nominees for height city jobs, the board rejected them in a humiliating style. Linda Niedweske , Mr. Sanders'due south onetime entrada manager, said he was "furious."

"He won fair and square," said Ms. Niedweske, whose engagement as Mr. Sanders's secretary was briefly blocked. "He was entitled to do what the people had elected him to do."

Mr. Sanders sued the board, accusing it of usurping his say-so, only lost in court. Denied a full slate of appointments, he enlisted volunteer advisers to help him map a urban center upkeep. There were small breakthroughs with the board — Mr. Sanders ushered through a pocket-size property-taxation increase — only at base, Mr. Sanders said recently, Democrats wanted to make him a "powerless mayor."

By the autumn, it was apparent to all sides that it would take an ballot to break the collision. Peter Clavelle , a close Sanders adviser during that period, said the mayor was "intent on exposing the obstructionists for what they were."

With off-year municipal elections looming in March of 1982, Mr. Sanders and his allies began assembling a slate of candidates to rescue him — a group of activists and academics who assailed the board's obstruction. One challenger, Huck Gutman, told voters the board's treatment of Mr. Sanders was the "central outcome" of the campaign.

"If the board of aldermen choose to snub him, to stonewall him, to refuse to mind to him, they are insulting not simply the mayor, but the people of Burlington," he wrote in a campaign entreatment.

Mr. Sanders formally endorsed Mr. Gutman and five other progressives, canvassing abreast them and casting the vote as a referendum on his leadership. Gary De Carolis , one of the progressives, said Mr. Sanders's intervention was decisive in his working-form ward, where Mr. Sanders was almost a celebrity.

"They loved him in my function of town, absolutely loved him," Mr. De Carolis said, noting Mr. Sanders reciprocated that amore. "He loved people who, up to this point, if the mayor e'er said hi to them , they were lucky."

On Election Twenty-four hour period, iii progressives defeated incumbent aldermen, including a Democrat who had derided Mr. Sanders as representing "the fungus of socialism." Two other challengers forced their opponents into runoff elections.

"Well, nosotros did information technology!! 3 seats on the board of aldermen with the possibility of two more," Mr. Sanders wrote to a political ally. "Needless to say, I am thrilled. I assume in that location will be far less confrontation and a great deal more positive action."

The runoffs would temper that exuberance. Progressives, including Mr. Gutman, lost both races, depriving Mr. Sanders of a legislative majority.

However, the remainder of power in Burlington had shifted, and Mr. Sanders had a solid bloc of allies and a veto pen with real leverage.

Representative Peter Welch, a Democrat who in the 1980s was president of the Vermont State Senate, said Mr. Sanders had broken the resistance of "an old-guard Democratic urban center, and a pretty conservative 1."

"It was kind of a total frontal assault by Bernie," said Mr. Welch. "And, lesser line, he succeeded."

Erhard Mahnke , a progressive who was elected to the board toward the stop of Mr. Sanders's tenure, said the political culture of the city was permanently altered in the Sanders era.

"Nosotros created lists. We called people. We called them twice. We went to their doors," Mr. Mahnke said. "A lot of the modern techniques of ground game, how elections are won — we brought that to Burlington."

'Into the Streets Where the People Were'

There was still the thing of getting Mr. Sanders re-elected. While voters had sided with his chosen candidates in the off-year contests, Democrats hoped a more prominent challenger would take on the mayor directly in 1983.

In the months earlier that election, a prominent local business paid for a poll that showed Madeleine Kunin, Vermont'due south lieutenant governor, would first a race for mayor with a wide lead over Mr. Sanders. But Ms. Kunin, who would later defeat Mr. Sanders in a bitter campaign for governor, declined to challenge him.

Image

Credit... Donna Light/Associated Printing

Instead, Mr. Sanders drew a pair of sturdy but lower-profile opponents: Judy Stephany , a Democratic land legislative leader, and Jim Gilson, a Republican school board official.

Ms. Stephany, who now goes past the surname Stephany Ahearn, said in an interview that Mr. Sanders had tapped currents of social change in Burlington, dynamics that separated a rising generation of progressives from a metropolis machine "controlled by more traditional, older Democrats."

Describing herself as a liberal, Ms. Stephany Ahearn said Mr. Sanders had captured a mood of youthful insurgency that eluded her party.

"When Senator Sanders ran, he came out of the Vietnam War protests and he was of the opinion that both Democrats and Republicans were flawed in the way they arroyo things," Ms. Stephany Ahearn said.

In the end, it wasn't very shut. Mr. Sanders did not gain command of the board of aldermen, though he took a bulk of the vote in the three-way race , lifted by enthusiastic voter turnout that topped his beginning election by more 40 percent.

"We were rather disappointed at not having gained a majority but I think the lath volition be more than agreeable due to my overwhelming community support," Mr. Sanders told a supporter in Syracuse, Northward.Y.

Mr. Sanders institute that his calendar began to motility more easily through city government, allowing him to leave a durable marking on Burlington's streets and its waterfront, on the city's finances and its political culture. Over his remaining terms, he would strengthen his grip on the city, building upwards a progressive movement by championing not only municipal concerns simply as well global issues like nuclear disarmament and the Reagan administration'due south fiscal policies. In 1989, the city elected one of his lieutenants, Mr. Clavelle, every bit his successor.

In private correspondence, Mr. Sanders acknowledged there was a infinite betwixt what he could conjure with his rhetoric and what he could actually achieve as mayor.

He could assail the White House for shortchanging cities to fund an arms race, merely even his biggest achievements on the local level were fractional solutions — imposing a new hospitality tax to heighten revenue, for instance, or creating a local land trust to protect affordable housing.

"As a mayor with socialist philosophies," he wrote in a 1985 letter, "I have limitations as any mayor would, simply I try to overcome these by expanding the role, by taking the job out of City Hall and into the streets where the people were."

That is the model for wielding ability Mr. Sanders aims to apply to the far mightier office he is now pursuing.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, Mr. Sanders has sounded like an echo of his younger self, threatening reprisals against the elected officials in his way. He has pledged to campaign in even the reddest of states against lawmakers who oppose his ideas, including against conservative Democrats. Information technology is a method of governing untested in the modern presidency.

Mr. Sanders suggested in the interview that the concluding Democratic president, Mr. Obama, would take washed well to utilize relentless pressure of the kind he envisions, rather than seeking "centre ground" with Republicans.

"Obama ran ane of the cracking campaigns in American history — a brilliant campaign," Mr. Sanders said. "Practice I remember he should take maintained that grass roots back up and activism in his first term, in a way he did non do? Yeah, I practise."

Mr. Sanders said he had discussed the subject with Mr. Obama in a private meeting. "He will tell yous that it'due south harder than it looks, which information technology is," he said.

He declined to elaborate on the details of their discussion. But asked whether Mr. Obama had raised whatsoever doubts in his mind virtually his theory of ability, Mr. Sanders answered in a word — "No" — and pointed to Burlington.

"At the stop of a few years," he said, "a sleepy political urban center became i of the near politically conscious and progressive cities in America."

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-mayor-burlington-vt.html

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