SANDERS, BERNARD

SANDERS, BERNARD (1941– ), independent member of Congress (1991– ). Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a paint salesman who immigrated to the U.S. as a young man. His mother raised her two sons in a small apartment, while his father earned a steady but limited income. Sanders' family circumstances, in which money was often tight, strongly influenced his understanding of the financial difficulties that face many working class families. Sanders graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn and spent one year at Brooklyn College. He then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1964 and then bought land in Middlesex, Vermont.

In 1971 his interest in progressive politics took him to a meeting of the newly formed Liberty Union Party, a third-party alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans. He left that meeting as the party's candidate for the U.S. Senate, and ended up with two percent of the vote. He ran three more races as a Liberty Union candidate – once more for the U.S. Senate, and twice for governor. His highest statewide vote as a Liberty Union candidate was six percent.

In 1981, he ran for mayor of Burlington, the largest city in the state and a university town. His victory was far from overwhelming. He beat the six-term Democratic incumbent by 12 votes. He won reelection three more times. In 1987, he defeated the mayoral candidate that both parties supported. During his tenure, the Progressives won several seats on the City Council. He worked on a people-friendly waterfront and on creating a tax base beyond the property tax. His support came from the working class instead of the business establishment.

Sanders stepped down as mayor of Burlington after four terms, and eight years. He was followed in office by a fellow Progressive. In 1986, he ran for governor of Vermont and came in third with 14 percent of the vote. In 1988, he ran for Vermont's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and lost by only three percentage points. A rematch in 1990 had Sanders a 16-point victor. He served in Congress as an independent, though he caucused with the Democrats and was given seniority by them. He was the first independent to serve in Congress since the 1940s and only the third avowed socialist to be elected to that body.

In Congress he pursued a progressive political agenda and founded the Progressive Coalition, which sought tax reform and single payer health insurance and reduced defense spending. He took on the Administration – Democratic and Republican alike – for a progressive agenda. Through 2005 he had been re-elected seven times. He was the longest-serving independent in the history of the House of Representatives.

Sanders received national recognition by helping to lead the fight to keep lower-income Vermonters and Americans warm in the wintertime, through successful efforts to increase funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (liheap). He also brought funding into the state for the student-based development of a curriculum on child-labor.

He followed the politically interesting principle "act locally, think globally" and thus led a well-publicized bus trip across the Canadian border with Vermonters to buy prescription drugs. As a result, the nation learned that the pharmaceutical industry sells exactly the same medicine in Canada, and every other country, at far lower prices than they are sold in the United States. Sanders played an active role in working with Vermont ibm employees who experienced a massive cut-back in the pensions they had been promised by that company. In Congress he established the House Progressive Caucus that had grown to 56 members as of 2005. Sanders chaired the caucus for its first eight years. Unlike most of his colleagues, he refused to take pac money and thus protected his independence. With the retirement of former Republican, and now independent, Senator Jeffords, Sanders was set to become an independent candidate for the Senate in 2006. Representing Vermont on a statewide basis, he begins the race with significant name recognition, and having run in statewide races time and again, since his seat is the only House seat Vermont has in Congress.

[Michael Berenbaum (2^nd ed.)]