Bernard Sanders

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders became the junior US senator from Vermont in 2007. He became the longest-serving Independent Congress member in history, having previously served as Vermont's sole US representative from 1991 to 2007. Despite his independent outlook, he came to national prominence during the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, when he ran a popular campaign before ultimately losing the Democratic nomination to mainstream candidate Hillary Clinton. He ran for president again in 2020, but he lost to former vice president Joe Biden during the primaries.

Background and Education

Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a primarily Jewish, working-class area of New York City. His mother, Dorothy (Glassberg) Sanders, was a homemaker, and his father, Elias Sanders, was a paint salesperson who had emigrated from Poland at age seventeen. Sanders's older brother Larry worked as a social worker in England before taking office as the health spokesperson for the Green Party of England in Wales in 2016. Sanders later said that his childhood explained his concern with the struggle of the working class.

An alumnus of Brooklyn's James Madison High School, Sanders spent one year at Brooklyn College between 1959 and 1960. He then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he first became involved in politics and received his bachelor's degree in political science in 1964. While in Chicago, he was active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s as a student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In the summer of 1963, Sanders was arrested during a demonstration against the segregation of Chicago's public schools.

Early Political Activity

After college, Sanders joined the Liberty Union Party, which opposed both capitalism and the Vietnam War. In 1971, he became the party's US Senate nominee. Sanders ran for the party three more times—twice for governor of Vermont, in 1972 and 1976, and once again for US Senator, each time with a single-digit percentage of the vote. In 1977, Sanders resigned from the party and went to work for the American People's Historical Society, a nonprofit organization working to document labor activism.

Mayor of Burlington

Sanders's reputation as a staunch supporter of the working class led to the creation of a grassroots support base in Burlington, Vermont, his adopted hometown. In 1980, he was persuaded to run for mayor and defeated Gordon Paquette, the five-term Democratic incumbent, by ten votes. He was reelected three more times as an Independent, who professed support for democratic socialism.

During his time as mayor from 1981 to 1989, Sanders created a pollution control system for Lake Champlain, launched downtown revitalization projects, funded additional units of low-income housing, and altered the city's tax base. In 1987, US News & World Report ranked Sanders as among the twenty best mayors in the United States. He inspired the creation of Vermont's Progressive Coalition, as well as books and articles by intrigued political scientists.

US Congress

In Vermont's 1986 gubernatorial race, Sanders came in third, with 14 percent of the vote. In the 1988 race for a US House of Representatives seat, he came in second, with 38 percent. Between campaigns, Sanders taught at Hamilton, his alma mater, and at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In 1990, he decided once again to run for Congress.

In Vermont, a state with few restrictions on gun ownership, opposition to gun control works as a political advantage. Surprisingly for non-Vermonters, the Independent socialist Sanders won the election by painting his Republican opponent as a gun control advocate. Sanders was the first member of Congress in four decades to be elected as an Independent.

After five reelections, Sanders became the House's longest-surviving Independent. He served on the Financial Services and Government Reform Committees. Sanders was known for involvement in such issues as progressive taxation, national health care, renewable energy, and social over military spending and was outspoken in his opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act.

Sanders announced his campaign for the US Senate in April 2005, after Jim Jeffords, the three-term US senator from Vermont, stated that he would not seek reelection. In 2006, Sanders won the election against Republican Rich Tarrant by a two-to-one margin. In 2010, Sanders delivered an eight-hour filibuster against the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which extended the tax rates implemented under President George W. Bush. He won reelection in 2012 with more than 70 percent of the vote. He served as chair of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs from 2013 to 2014 and held a variety of committee assignments during his second term, serving on the Environment and Public Works; Energy and Natural Resources; Budget; Joint Economic; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees. From 2015 to 2016, he served as the ranking member of the Budget Committee and as the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee's Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security.

In the November 2018 midterm elections, Sanders easily won reelection to his third term in the Senate, defeating Republican challenger Lawrence Zupan by a large margin. During the lead-up to the elections, he campaigned vigorously for Democratic congressional and gubernatorial candidates, particularly in battleground states. During his third term, he continued to work on several Senate committees. He was the ranking member of the Budget Committee from 2019 through 2020, before chairing it from 2021 to 2022. On the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he chaired the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security from 2021 to 2022 before chairing the whole committee from 2023 to 2024.

In May 2024, Sanders announced that he planned to run for a fourth Senate term. That November, he was reelected in the general election against Republican nominee Gerald Malloy and four other candidates.

2016 Presidential Campaign

In April 2015, Sanders announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president in Burlington. He was critical of the US Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission and stated in his speech announcing his candidacy that he did not believe "that the men and women who defended American democracy fought to create a situation where billionaires own the political process." He did not raise funds for his campaign through a super PAC, but instead sought individual donations. By the end of 2015, he had raised more than $73 million from more than one million people, with donations averaging less than twenty-eight dollars. Sanders made wealth and income inequality, free college tuition, job creation and a living wage, healthcare reform, and climate change the key pillars of his campaign.

In February 2016, Sanders lost the Iowa Caucus lost to his principal opponent in the primaries, Hillary Clinton, by a historically close margin. One week later, Sanders won the New Hampshire primary with more than 60 percent of the popular vote. Although the results of the subsequent primaries were generally unfavorable for Sanders's campaign, he continued to land unexpected victories or lose by extremely narrow margins, keeping his campaign afloat through the early summer. On July 12, 2016, Sanders announced his endorsement of Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee. Despite his failed presidential bid, a Fox poll in March 2017 ranked Sanders as the most popular politician in the United States, with a favorable rating of 61 percent.

In recognition of the popularity that he had gained in his presidential bid, Sanders was made the outreach chair on a Democratic Senate leadership team in November 2016. The following year, he published the book Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, which aimed to further his causes by educating the public, particularly younger readers, about the state of political policies and how to get involved. At the same time, he had to defend himself against accusations presented by Clinton in her book What Happened (2017) that his primary campaign had contributed to her loss in the 2016 general election to Republican Donald Trump, even though Sanders eventually endorsed her. Meanwhile, Sanders also spent time traveling to events in different states to continue championing liberal and progressive causes while trying to get support for bills such as the one promoting a single-payer healthcare system.

2020 Presidential Campaign

In February 2019, Sanders officially entered his name in the growing field of Democratic primary candidates for the 2020 presidential election, framing his run as a push to finish the grassroots movement he started in 2016. Many commentators noted, however, that while in 2016 he was inarguably the most progressive voice in the race, the 2020 campaign featured several figures noted for their left-wing credentials.

From the beginning of his campaign, Sanders remained one of the leaders in fundraising in the Democratic race for the nomination. With Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and former vice president Joe Biden considered his main competition, he traveled and spoke at various events to communicate his platform before debates began in June 2019. Though he reportedly suffered a heart attack in early October, sparking conversations about the consideration of candidates' ages, he was able to participate in the debate that occurred later that month. By December, he had released letters from doctors stating that he was in good health and fit to continue. Sanders lost the Democratic primaries to Biden, announcing his withdrawal from the race in April 2020.

Personal Life

For many years, Sanders has resided in Burlington with his second spouse, Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders. They have had four children together and seven grandchildren.

Bibliography

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Ember, Sydney. "Bernie Sanders Drops Out of 2020 Democratic Race for President." The New York Times, 8 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/politics/bernie-sanders-drops-out.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Ember, Sydney. "Bernie Sanders Is in 'Good Health,' His Doctors Say." The New York Times, 30 Dec. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/us/politics/bernie-sanders-health-medical-records.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Ember, Sydney. "Bernie Sanders, Once the Progressive Outlier, Joins a Crowded Presidential Field." The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Kane, Paul, and Philip Rucker. "An Unlikely Contender, Sanders Takes On 'Billionaire Class' in 2016 Bid." The Washington Post, 30 Apr. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sanders-takes-on-billionaire-class-in-launching-2016-bid-against-clinton/2015/04/30/4849fe32-ef3a-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9‗story.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Keither, Tamara. "Bernie Sanders 'Stunned' by Large Crowds Showing Up for Him." All Things Considered, 15 June 2015, www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/15/414689799/bernie-sanders-stunned-by-large-crowds-showing-up-for-him. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Sanders, Bernie. The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. Nation Books, 2011.

Sanders, Bernie. "The International Billionaire Class Is Making Out Like Bandits." The Nation, 8 Feb. 2024, www.thenation.com/article/world/bernie-sanders-speech-center-for-international-policy/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Sanders, Bernie. Our Revolution. Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.

Seelye, Katharine Q. "As Mayor, Bernie Sanders Was More Pragmatist than Socialist." The New York Times, 25 Nov. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/us/politics/as-mayor-bernie-sanders-was-more-pragmatic-than-socialist.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Talbot, Margaret. "The Populist Prophet." The New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-populist-prophet. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Timm, Trevor. "Everyone Loves Bernie Sanders. Except, It Seems, the Democratic Party." The Guardian, 17 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/17/everyone-loves-bernie-sanders-except-democratic-party. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Wallace-Wells, Benjamin. "Bernie Sanders's Campaign Isn't Over." The New Yorker, Aug. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/bernie-sanders-campaign-isnt-over. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.