Bernie Sanders

For the ice hockey player, see Bernie Saunders.

Bernie Sanders
Official Senate portrait of Sanders, 2007
United States Senator from Vermont
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2007 Serving with Patrick Leahy
Preceded by	Jim Jeffords
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
In office January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2015
Preceded by	Patty Murray
Succeeded by	Johnny Isakson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont's At-large district
In office January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2007
Preceded by	Peter Plympton Smith
Succeeded by	Peter Welch
Mayor of Burlington
In office April 6, 1981 – April 4, 1989
Preceded by	Gordon Paquette
Succeeded by	Peter Clavelle
Personal details
Born	Bernard Sanders (1941-09-08) September 8, 1941 Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Political party	Democratic (2015–present)
Other political affiliations	Independent (1979–2015) Liberty Union (1971–1979)
Spouse(s)	Deborah Shiling (1964–1966) Jane O'Meara Driscoll (1988–present)
Children	Levi (with Susan Mott) 3 stepchildren
Alma mater	Brooklyn College University of Chicago (B.A.)
Signature
Website	Senate website Presidential campaign website

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Vermont. A Democrat as of 2015, he had been the longest-serving independent in U.S. Congressional history. Sanders has been the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee since January 2015. He is a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Sanders was born and raised in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, Sanders was a member of the Young People's Socialist League and an active civil rights protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1963, he participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.

After settling in Vermont in 1968, Sanders ran unsuccessful third-party campaigns for governor and U.S. senator in the early to mid-1970s. As an independent, he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's most populous city, in 1981. He was reelected three times. In 1990, he was elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1991, Sanders co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012, he was reelected by a large margin, capturing almost 71% of the popular vote.

Sanders has long been critical of U.S. foreign policy, and was an early and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War. He rose to national prominence following his 2010 filibuster against the proposed extension of the Bush tax cuts. A self-described socialist and democratic socialist, Sanders favors policies similar to those of social democratic parties in Europe, particularly those instituted by the Nordic countries. He is a leading progressive voice on issues such as income inequality, universal healthcare, parental leave, climate change, LGBT rights, and campaign finance reform. He is also outspoken on civil rights and civil liberties, and has been particularly critical of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA surveillance programs, and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Early life, education, and family

File:Bernie-sanders-university-of-chicago-1962.png

Sanders speaks to students participating in Chicago's first civil rights sit-in in protest of University of Chicago's segregated campus housing policy, January 1962

Sanders was born in Brooklyn, to Eli Sanders and Dorothy Glassberg. Eli Sanders was a Jewish immigrant from Poland whose family was killed in the Holocaust; Sanders has said that he became interested in politics at an early age: "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932 ... and 50 million people died as a result ... what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important."

Sanders attended elementary school at P.S. 197, where he won a state championship on the basketball team. He attended Hebrew school in the afternoons, and celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1954. Sanders attended James Madison High School, where he was captain of the track team. While at Madison, Sanders lost his first election, finishing last out of three candidates for the student body presidency. Sanders' mother died in June 1959 at the age of 46, shortly after Sanders graduated from high school.

Sanders studied at Brooklyn College for a year in 1959–60 before transferring to the University of Chicago. While at the University of Chicago, Sanders joined the Young People's Socialist League, the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, and was active in the Civil Rights Movement as a student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In January 1962, Sanders led a rally at the University of Chicago administration building to protest university president George Wells Beadle's segregated campus housing policy. "We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments," Sanders said at the protest. Sanders and 32 other students then entered the building and camped outside the president's office, performing the first civil rights sit-in in Chicago history. After weeks of sit-ins, Beadle and the university formed a commission to investigate discrimination. Sanders also participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That summer, he was found guilty of resisting arrest during a demonstration against segregation in Chicago's public schools and was fined $25.

In addition to his civil rights activism during the 1960s and 1970s, Sanders was active in several peace and antiwar movements. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Student Peace Union while attending the University of Chicago. Sanders applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, at which point he was too old to be drafted. Although he opposed the war, Sanders never placed any blame on those who fought and has been a strong supporter of veterans' benefits.

In 1964, Sanders graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. He married Deborah Shiling and they bought a summer home in Vermont; they had no children and divorced in 1966. Over the next few years, he took various jobs in New York and Vermont and spent several months on an Israeli kibbutz. His son, Levi Sanders, was born in 1969 to Susan Campbell Mott. In 1988 Sanders married Jane (O'Meara) Driscoll, a former president of Burlington College, in Burlington, Vermont. With her he has three stepchildren, whom he considers his own.

Sanders' brother, Larry Sanders, lives in England. He was a Green Party county councillor representing the East Oxford division on Oxfordshire County Council, until he retired from the Council in 2013. Larry Sanders ran as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2015 British general election and came in fifth.

Sanders has said he is "proud to be Jewish" but "not particularly religious." Sanders' wife is Roman Catholic, and he has frequently expressed admiration for Pope Francis, saying that "the leader of the Catholic Church is raising profound issues. It is important that we listen to what he has said." Sanders often quotes Francis on economic issues and has described him as "incredibly smart and brave."

Early political career

Main article: Electoral history of Bernie Sanders

Liberty Union campaigns

Sanders began his political career in 1971 as a member of the Liberty Union Party, which originated in the anti-war movement and the People's Party. He ran as the Liberty Union candidate for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and as a candidate for U.S. senator in 1972 and 1974. In the 1974 race, Sanders finished third (5,901 votes; 4.1%) behind the victor, 33-year-old Chittenden County State's Attorney Patrick Leahy (D, VI; 70,629 votes; 49.4%), and two-term incumbent U.S. Representative Dick Mallary (R; 66,223 votes; 46.3%). In 1979, Sanders resigned from the party and worked as a writer and the director of the nonprofit American People's Historical Society (APHS). While with the APHS, he made a 30-minute documentary about American Socialist leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.

Mayor of Burlington

In 1981, at the suggestion of his close friend Richard Sugarman, a professor of religion at the University of Vermont, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington and defeated six-term Democratic incumbent Gordon Paquette by ten votes in a four-way contest on March 3, 1981. Sanders was reelected three times, defeating both Democratic and Republican candidates. He received 53% of the vote in 1983 and 55% in 1985. In his final run for mayor in 1987, Sanders defeated Paul Lafayette, a Democrat endorsed by both major parties.

During Sanders' first term, his supporters, including the first Citizens Party City Councilor Terry Bouricius, formed the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party. The Progressives never held more than six seats on the 13-member city council, but they had enough votes to keep the council from overriding Sanders' vetoes. Under Sanders, Burlington became the first city in the country to fund community-trust housing.

During the 1980s, Sanders was a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. In 1985, Burlington City Hall hosted a foreign policy speech by Noam Chomsky. In his introduction, Sanders praised Chomsky as "a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America" and said he was "delighted to welcome a person who I think we're all very proud of".

Sanders' administration balanced the city budget and drew a minor league baseball team, the Vermont Reds, then the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, to Burlington. Under Sanders' leadership, Burlington sued the local television cable franchise, winning reduced rates for customers.

As mayor, Sanders led extensive downtown revitalization projects. One of his signature achievements was the improvement of Burlington's Lake Champlain waterfront. In 1981, Sanders campaigned against the unpopular plans by Tony Pomerleau, a Burlington developer, to convert the then-industrial waterfront property owned by the Central Vermont Railway into expensive condominiums, hotels, and offices. Sanders ran under the slogan "Burlington is not for sale" and successfully supported a plan that redeveloped the waterfront area into a mixed-use district featuring housing, parks, and public space. Today, the waterfront area includes many parks and miles of public beach and bike paths, a boathouse, and a science center. Burlington is now considered one of the most livable cities in the nation.

In 1987, U.S News ranked Sanders as one of America's best mayors.

After serving four terms, Sanders chose not to seek reelection in 1989. He briefly taught political science at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government that year and at Hamilton College in 1991.

Sanders officially launched his candidacy for President of the United States at Waterfront Park in Burlington in 2015.

U.S. House of Representatives

See also: Electoral history of Bernie Sanders

Elections

In 1988, incumbent Republican Congressman Jim Jeffords decided to run for the U.S. Senate, vacating the House seat representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. Republican Lieutenant Governor Peter P. Smith won the House election with a plurality, securing 41% of the vote. Sanders, who ran as an independent, placed second with 38% of the vote, while Democratic State Representative Paul N. Poirier placed third with 19% of the vote. Two years later, Sanders ran for the seat again and defeated the incumbent Smith by a margin of 56% to 40%.

Sanders was the first independent elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since Frazier Reams' election to represent Ohio 40 years earlier. He served as a Representative for 16 years, winning reelection by large margins except during the 1994 Republican Revolution, when he won by 3.3%, with 49.8% of the vote.

Tenure

Sanders in 1991

During his first year in the House, Sanders often alienated allies and colleagues with his criticism of both political parties as working primarily on behalf of the wealthy. In 1991, Sanders co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of mostly liberal Democrats that Sanders chaired for its first eight years.

In 1993, Sanders voted against the Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks and imposed a waiting period on firearm purchasers in the United States; the bill passed by a vote of 238–187. In 2005, he voted for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The act's purpose was to prevent firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for negligence when crimes have been committed with their products. In 2015, Sanders defended his vote, saying: "If somebody has a gun and it falls into the hands of a murderer and the murderer kills somebody with a gun, do you hold the gun manufacturer responsible? Not any more than you would hold a hammer company responsible if somebody beats somebody over the head with a hammer."

Sanders voted against the resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 and 2002, and opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists that has been cited as the legal justification for controversial military actions since the September 11 attacks. Sanders voted for a non-binding resolution expressing support for troops at the outset of the invasion of Iraq, but gave a floor speech criticizing the partisan nature of the vote and the George W. Bush administration's actions in the run-up to the war. Regarding the investigation of what turned out to be a leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity by a State Department official, Sanders stated: "The revelation that the President authorized the release of classified information in order to discredit an Iraq war critic should tell every member of Congress that the time is now for a serious investigation of how we got into the war in Iraq and why Congress can no longer act as a rubber stamp for the President."

Sanders was a consistent critic of the Patriot Act. As a member of Congress, he voted against the original Patriot Act legislation. After its 357-to-66 passage in the House, Sanders sponsored and voted for several subsequent amendments and acts attempting to curtail its effects, and voted against each reauthorization. In June 2005, Sanders proposed an amendment to limit Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to obtain individuals' library and book-buying records. The amendment passed the House by a bipartisan majority but was removed on November 4 of that year in House-Senate negotiations and never became law.

In March 2006, after a series of resolutions passed in various Vermont towns calling for him to bring articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, Sanders stated that it would be "impractical to talk about impeachment" with Republicans in control of the House and Senate. Still, Sanders made no secret of his opposition to the Bush Administration, which he regularly criticized for its cuts to social programs.

Sanders was a vocal critic of Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan; in June 2003, during a question-and-answer discussion with the then-Chairman, Sanders told Greenspan that he was concerned that Greenspan was "way out of touch" and "that you see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations". Sanders said in 1998 that investment banks and commercial banks should remain separate entities. In October 2008, after Sanders had been elected to the Senate, Greenspan admitted to Congress that his economic ideology was flawed.

On November 2, 2005, Sanders voted against the Online Freedom of Speech Act, which would have exempted the Internet from the campaign finance restrictions of the McCain–Feingold Bill.

U.S. Senate

Elections

Main articles: United States Senate election in Vermont, 2006 and United States Senate election in Vermont, 2012

Sanders being sworn in by Vice President Dick Cheney

Sanders entered the race for the U.S. Senate on April 21, 2005, after Senator Jim Jeffords announced that he would not seek a fourth term. Chuck Schumer, Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, endorsed Sanders, a critical move as it meant that no Democrat running against Sanders could expect to receive financial help from the party. Sanders was also endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Democratic National Committee Chairman and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Dean said in May 2005 that he considered Sanders an ally who "votes with the Democrats 98% of the time". Then-Senator Barack Obama also campaigned for Sanders in Vermont in March 2006. Sanders entered into an agreement with the Democratic Party, much as he had as a congressman, to be listed in their primary but to decline the nomination should he win, which he did.

In the most expensive political campaign in Vermont's history, Sanders defeated businessman Rich Tarrant by an approximately 2-to-1 margin. Many national media outlets projected Sanders as the winner before any returns came in. He was reelected in 2012 with 71% of the vote.

Tenure

Polling conducted in August 2011 by Public Policy Polling found that Sanders' approval rating was 67% and his disapproval rating 28%, making him then the third-most popular senator in the country. Both the NAACP and the NHLA have given Sanders 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. In 2015 Sanders was named one of the Top 5 of The Forward 50.

Budget

On September 24, 2008, Sanders posted an open letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decrying the initial bank bailout proposal; it drew more than 8,000 citizen cosigners in 24 hours. On January 26, 2009, Sanders and Democrats Robert Byrd, Russ Feingold, and Tom Harkin were the sole majority members to vote against confirming Timothy Geithner as United States Secretary of the Treasury.

On December 10, 2010, Sanders delivered an 8½-hour speech against the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, the proposed extension of the Bush-era tax rates that eventually became law, saying "Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own?" (A long speech such as this is commonly known as a filibuster, but because it didn't block action, it was not technically a filibuster under Senate rules.) In response to the speech, hundreds of people signed online petitions urging Sanders to run in the 2012 presidential election, and pollsters began measuring his support in key primary states. Progressive activists such as Rabbi Michael Lerner and economist David Korten publicly voiced their support for a prospective Sanders run against President Barack Obama.

Sanders' speech was published in February 2011 by Nation Books as The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, with authorial proceeds going to Vermont nonprofit charitable organizations.

Senate Budget Committee

In January 2015, Sanders became the ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee. He appointed economics professor Stephanie Kelton, a distinguished modern monetary theory scholar and self-described "deficit owl", as the chief economic advisor for the committee's Democratic minority and presented a report aimed at helping "rebuild the disappearing middle class", which included proposals to raise the minimum wage, boost infrastructure spending, and increase Social Security payments.

Committee assignments

Sanders listening to testimony by Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Sloan D. Gibson, 2014

• Committee on the Budget (Ranking Member)
• Committee on Environment and Public Works
  • Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
  • Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy
  • Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
• Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
  • Subcommittee on Energy
  • Subcommittee on National Parks
  • Subcommittee on Water and Power
• Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
  • Subcommittee on Children and Families
  • Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging (Ranking Member)
• Committee on Veterans' Affairs

2016 presidential campaign

Main article: Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, 2016

Sanders campaigning in New Orleans, Louisiana, July 2015

Sanders announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president on April 30, 2015, in an address on the Capitol lawn. His campaign was officially launched on May 26, 2015, in Burlington.

In his announcement, Sanders said, "I don't believe that the men and women who defended American democracy fought to create a situation where billionaires own the political process." His entry into the race was welcomed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying: "I'm glad to see him get out there and give his version of what leadership in this country should be." On June 19, 2015, the "Ready For Warren" organization (Warren has resisted calls to become a candidate herself) endorsed Sanders and rebranded itself "Ready to Fight".

Unlike other presidential candidates, Sanders has stated that he will not pursue funding through a "Super PAC", instead focusing on small individual donations. Sanders' presidential campaign raised $1.5 million within 24 hours of his official announcement. After four days, Sanders' campaign had raised $3 million from small donors, with an average of $43 per donation. On July 2, the campaign announced that it had raised $15 million from 250,000 donors. On September 30, The New York Times reported that Sanders had raised $26 million over the preceding three months, exceeding Barack Obama's pace of fundraising in 2008; the campaign announced that it had reached one million individual donations, becoming the first 2016 candidate to reach that threshold.

Sanders speaking in Minneapolis

Sanders has used social media to help his campaign gain momentum. Along with posting content on Twitter and Facebook, he held an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit on May 19. Sanders has also gained a large grassroots organizational following online. A July 29 meetup organized online brought 100,000 supporters to more than 3,500 simultaneous events nationwide. Sanders has received over one million individual online donations. He has credited this to his "organic" approach to social media, and to writing his campaign's online postings himself.

On June 25, 2015, The New York Times noted that Sanders was "running right alongside [Clinton] in a statistical dead heat for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination" in the New Hampshire primaries, citing a CNN/WMUR poll. By September 2015, polls had Sanders leading Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire. On November 20, an online NBC News poll showed that Sanders was the preferred candidate of 33% of Democratic and independent voters, trailing Hillary Clinton by 16 points. Sanders continued to show a strong lead among young voters and trailed Clinton by three points among white voters.

Sanders' campaign events in June 2015 drew overflow crowds around the country, to his surprise. When Clinton and Sanders made public appearances within days of each other in Des Moines, Iowa, Sanders drew larger crowds, even though he had already made numerous stops around the state and Clinton's visit was her first in 2015. On July 1, 2015, Sanders' campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, drew the largest crowd of any 2016 presidential candidate to that date, with an estimated turnout of 10,000. On July 18, he drew an even larger crowd in Arizona, with an estimated turnout of over 11,000. On August 8, Sanders drew an estimated 15,000 in Seattle at the University of Washington's Hec Edmundson Pavilion. A day later, some 28,000 people attended a Sanders rally in Portland, Oregon.

As of December 1, 2015, online polling had Sanders as the front-runner to become Time's 2015 Person of the Year, with 10.7% of the vote to second-place Malala Yousafzai's 5.2%.

On December 3, 2015, a Quinnipiac University poll found Sanders to be the most electable presidential candidate in either major party, and more electable than Hillary Clinton against top Republican candidates.

Political positions

Main article: Political positions of Bernie Sanders

Sanders is a self-described "democratic socialist" and progressive who admires the Nordic model of social democracy and is a proponent of workplace democracy. Many commentators have noted the consistency of his views throughout his political career. On November 19, 2015, Sanders gave a speech at Georgetown University about his view of democratic socialism, including its place in the policies of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Bernie Sanders focuses on economic issues such as income and wealth inequality, raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, reducing the burden of student debt, making public colleges and universities tuition-free by taxing financial transactions, and expanding Social Security benefits by eliminating the cap on the payroll tax on all income above $250,000. Sanders has become a prominent supporter of laws requiring companies to provide their workers parental leave, sick leave, and vacation time, noting that such laws have been adopted by almost every developed country. He also supports legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a union. Sanders advocates bold action to reverse global warming and substantial investment in infrastructure, with "energy efficiency and sustainability" and job creation as prominent goals. He is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Sanders has advocated for more democratic participation by citizens, campaign finance reform, and the overturn of Citizens United v. FEC. He has denounced institutional racism and called for criminal justice reform to reduce the number of people in prison, advocates a crackdown on police brutality, and supports abolishing private, for-profit prisons and the death penalty. Sanders supports legalizing marijuana at the federal level. He is also an advocate of comprehensive financial reforms and favors breaking up "too big to fail" financial institutions and restoring Glass–Steagall legislation. Sanders was a strong opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has been critical of a number of policies instituted during the War on Terror, particularly mass surveillance and the USA PATRIOT Act. He takes a liberal approach to social issues, advocating for LGBT rights and lobbying against the Defense of Marriage Act and maintaining a pro-choice stance on abortion, as well as opposing the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

On November 15, 2015, in response to ISIS' attacks in Paris, Sanders cautioned against "Islamophobia" and said, "We gotta be tough, not stupid," in the war against ISIS, and that the U.S. should continue to welcome Syrian refugees.

See also

• Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016
• Democratic Party (United States)
• Electoral history of Bernie Sanders
• Senate Democratic Caucus

Further reading

• Rice, Tom W. (Summer 1985). "Who Votes for a Socialist Mayor?: The Case of Burlington, Vermont". Polity. 17 (4). Palgrave Macmillan Journals: 795–806. doi:10.2307/3234575. JSTOR 3234575.
• Rosenfeld, Steven (1992). Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress. Wakefield, NH: Hollowbrook Publishing. ISBN 978-0893416980.
• Sanders, Bernie (2012). The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. CreateSpace Independent Publishing. ISBN 978-1468178470.
• Sanders, Bernie (1998). Outsider in the House. Contributions by Huck Gutman. Verso. ISBN 978-1859841778.
• Soifer, Steven (1991). The Socialist Mayor: Bernard Sanders in Burlington, Vermont. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 978-0897892193.

External links

• Official U.S. Senate Site
• Official Presidential Campaign Site
• FeelTheBern.org - detailed position descriptions compiled by volunteers
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Bernie Sanders at Curlie
• Your online guide to Bernie Sanders. The Washington Post, April 30, 2015
• Video on YouTube