2006 New Member Profiles
Vermont Senate: Bernie Sanders (I)
The Almanac of American Politics
© National Journal Group Inc.
| Bernie Sanders |
| Born: |
September 8, 1941 |
| Family: |
Wife, Jane; four children |
| Religion: |
Jewish |
| Education: |
Attended Brooklyn College; University of Chicago, B.A. 1964 |
| Career: |
Freelance writer; documentary filmmaker; director, American People's Historical Society; lecturer, Harvard University and Hamilton College |
Elected
Office: |
Burlington mayor, 1981-89; U.S. House, 1990-2006
|
For his entire career in public office, Bernie Sanders has been a political anomaly. His victory over Republican Richard Tarrant doesn't change that: He goes from being the only independent in the House to being the only independent in the Senate. Sanders will succeed retiring three-term independent Sen. James Jeffords.
Sanders, who entered politics as a member of the socialist Liberty Union Party, lost two bids for the U.S. Senate and two races for governor before becoming Burlington's mayor in 1981 by only 10 votes. After yet another unsuccessful bid for the governor's office, Sanders lost a House campaign to Republican Peter Smith in 1988. Two years later he defeated Smith, and he hasn't lost a race since.
Despite his decidedly left-wing politics, Sanders received a chilly welcome from House Democrats upon his arrival in Washington. Party leaders preferred to keep their distance from a self-avowed socialist. They only reluctantly accepted him into the caucus and granted him seniority as a Democrat.
In the House, Sanders helped to make the high cost of prescription drugs a national issue. He was the first member of Congress to sponsor bus trips to Canada so that people could buy cheaper medicines. He was also an outspoken opponent of permanent normal trade relations with China and of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he was the most prominent House supporter of the Northeast Dairy Compact.
When Jeffords announced in April 2005 that he would not seek re-election, it was not without some irony that the Democratic Party looked to Sanders to run for the open seat. Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman and a former Vermont governor, declared, "A victory for Bernie Sanders is a win for Democrats."
Ever the loner, Sanders said he would neither seek nor accept the Democratic nomination. But, with his consent, Democrats put his name on the primary ballot anyway. In the September 12 Democratic primary, he won 94 percent of the vote.
Tarrant, the Republican nominee, waged an almost entirely self-funded campaign. A former high school basketball star who went on to become a multimillionaire, he poured more than $5.2 million of his own money into the race by the end of August, much of it spent on television commercials.
Featuring the tagline "What's happened to Bernie?" Tarrant's ads attacked Sanders as being soft on child molesters and drug dealers and hard on rape victims and working mothers. Despite the attacks, Tarrant never closed the yawning gap in the polls.
