PART 2: MR. SANDERS GOES TO BURLINGTON
After 1972, then what?
Sanders '72 might not have won any elections, but Sanders continued pursuing elected office in the mid-70s, as he and other members of Liberty Union also began to act as consumer advocates and organizers. They gained particular attention in hearings about a proposed rate hike by New England telephone Company. Party chair Martha Abbot and Sanders were both quoted in a March 10, 1973 story by Charles Butler, Jr. in the Bennington Banner, arguing that Vermonters could not afford the 38 percent increase in residential rates and 15 percent increase in long distance charges for in-state calls. The public hearings drew "hundreds of telephone users," according to the article, and the ire of Vermont's Public Service Board (PSB) officials.
Chairman Gilbert of the board declared that they had heard "Bernie once too often," while Commissioner Daniel Ruggles III attempted to amend the rules for public hearings to prohibit Sanders from any further testimony. But Sanders was tenacious. In a September 6, 1973 story in the Bennington Banner, Sanders appears again in connection with utilities. Attorney Stella Hackel of the New England Telephone Board asked for a public hearing on service disconnection policies be called off; her employer demanded that the Vermont Public Service Board first prove that private utilities companies had discriminatory disconnection policies before calling the hearing. An attorney for the Vermont Gas System, not surprisingly, joined her. The PSB seemed largely to favor the view of these private companies. The PSB's chief of consumer affairs, the supposed government guardian of consumer interests, argued in favor of a utility disconnection policy that made no allowances for cutoffs in Vermont's cold winter months. Sanders appears in the story attacking this idea, arguing that power should stay connected, no matter the circumstances. He stood alongside several individual witnesses and the Vermont Welfare Rights Organization in this showdown over consumer rights.
Now that sounds like Bernie Sanders! It was an issue that many Vermonters cared about and were affected by. One didn't have to agree with vague calls for revolution despise the unresponsiveness of both the companies and Vermont's supposed government watchdog, the PSB. And it was an issue that could be addressed without reference to race or gender—the "demographic stuff" that Sanders still dislikes, saying it's not his "cup of tea." And Sanders was learning. His class appeals were no longer vague, but full of wonkish detail. In a Friday, July 19, 1974 Bennington Banner story, his stance on aid to low-income elderly came complete with numbers:
In June 1973, the average retired worker received "about $163 a month," he said, adding the figure was lower for Vermont since it ranks lower than most states in regard to average Social Security benefits... The [social security] tax, he said, remains at 5.85 per cent, regardless of income. "In fact, there is a cutoff point at $13,200, which means that an individual earning that amount contributes the exact same amount to the Social Security fund as an individual earning $50,000. This is absurd."
Sanders' reported plans for solving the problems were still a bit vague (no more loopholes for big business, no more support for military dictatorships, and no more paying the defense industry for cost overruns), but Sanders and the LU were growing into a practical force in Vermont politics. Although the party won no seats in 1974, a November story in the Bennington Banner suggested LU was on the verge of becoming an important third party, and, in the words of its leaders, was a year round political force. The paper cited LU's involvement in utility rate hearings, supporting striking construction workers in Chittenden[corrected] County, and opposing four year terms for governor as among its causes. (Sanders was specifically credited for forcing the major parties to keep their focus on Vermont's "tooth fairy" bill, providing dental care clinics for children.) LU had been re-made into a party with concrete issues: re-focusing Vermont's economy away from the tourist trade and towards small-scale agriculture, state loans for people to buy homes, and worker-run businesses.
It's also notable for what dropped out as priorities: legalization of drug use, hitchhiking, racial disparities in prison, and other issues from 1972. One old issue was specifically rejected in the article: environmental preservation laws, which just "preserve gorgeous views for the rich while pushing poorer people into trailer parks."
As for addressing gendered issues, well, Sanders '74 is kind of an asshole.
In a November 2 interview with the Bennington Banner, Sanders "deplored the lack of support [Liberty Union] candidate Ms. Abbott has received from women." So, apparently, he thinks that women should vote for Abbott because she's a woman? (But they definitely should not vote for other female candidates or, you know, vote for someone they believe will win and who reflects their values.) Then Sanders "said he was not impressed with other women candidates elsewhere." None of them? Really? Bearing in mind how difficult it was to get women on ballots at all in the 1970s, how crucial it was, he can't muster any kind words about how it's good to see more women running? Nope!
In fact, Sanders specifically singled out Ella Grasso, running that year for governor of Connecticut on the Democratic ticket, as "nothing more than a political hack."
And this is the part where give Sanders '74 a big dose of side-eye. Because he couldn't have picked out a worse woman to diss.
Ella Grasso made history that year as the first woman to be elected governor of a state without having been married to a previous governor. That's right: she made it without being seen as a mere appendage of her husband. And how did she do it? Moving up through the state Democratic party ranks, winning a seat in the CT General Assembly in 1952 (where she was the first woman elected Floor Leader), serving as Secretary of State (and turning that office into one that was accessible to public for their concerns), before being elected to Congress in 1970.
If being a "party hack" means a long record of public service and electoral success as a Democrat, then yes, I guess Grasso was guilty as charged. And I sort of want to ask 1974 Bernie Sanders: How else, exactly, do you expect a woman not married to or born into the political elites or money (her parents were working class immigrants) to get elected?
The most generous interpretation is that Sanders simply did not care or comprehend anything about the oppressive dynamics that were keeping women out of elected office. Nor did he care or comprehend that one of the important parts of getting more women in office is, well, getting more women in office. The greater the numbers, the more the default association of "male" with "authority" starts to weaken. Sanders had one class-based revolution to engage in, and it was getting more and more narrowly defined. In fact, he seems to have been pretty darn comfortable with the privileges patriarchy afforded him.
His dismissive attitude was in full force for the 1976 gubernatorial election, in which he ran as LU's candidate one again. His opponents were Republican Richard Snelling and Democrat Stella Hackel—the same Stella Hackel who had served as New England Tel and Tel's lawyer during LU's showdown with the PSB over disconnection policies.
Hackel's bid was undoubtedly historic; she was not only running for governor, she was running to be Vermont's first female governor. It was also troubled. She ran as a more conservative Democrat, following a national trend towards increasing "fiscal conservatism." Republican Richard Snelling also ran as a fiscal conservative and a "humanitarian liberal," according to his October endorsement in the Brattleboro Reformer.
Her bid was also full of some racist, classist, bullshit.
She presaged Reagan's "welfare queen" attacks in a primary speech, suggesting that a young woman could have children and then "live like an heiress with a trust fund" under the then-current programs for welfare, food stamps, and aid to children. It was an appalling remark. Considering she had been a lawyer for the exploitative utility companies, she couldn't have found a better way to sound elitist, bigoted and heartless unless she'd pulled an Ebeneezer Scrooge and publicly wished for the poor would die so as to "reduce the surplus population."
In a June 12 story, Rod Clarke reports that the remarks had received little attention until they were addressed by another Democratic primary candidate. A month later, they were dogging Hackel on the campaign trail, where she reportedly had to defend welfare against white, working class voters who took her earlier remarks as encouragement for abolishing welfare altogether. Her Republican opponent, Snelling, tacked to her left, chiding her for hostility to welfare, according to a September 22, 1976 story in the Bennington Banner.
Weirdly, instead of attacking her on the classist slur, Sanders preferred to lump her in with Snelling in a way that called attention to her gender. According to a Thursday September 23, 1976 account in the Bennington Banner: "The only difference between Richard Snelling, a Republican, and Stella Hackel, a Democrat, is that one of them is a man and one a woman." Stella Hackel had anticipated the later-ubiquitous racist, classist "welfare queen," but here's Sanders anticipating "Richard Nixon in a dress pantsuit." WTF?
To be clear: Hackel's statements on welfare were shitty and bigoted. But I don't have to endorse her politics to defend her against misogyny, because that's how feminism works. (Exhibit A: Michelle Bachmann. Exhibit B: Sarah Palin.) So I have to note that Hackel got some demonstrably sexist shit thrown at her throughout the campaign. There were newspaper headlines deploring her "two sides" (women are deceptive!), and editorials sniffing that, although Hackel was an experienced state official, "[w]e are not at all sure she has profited as she should from her experience" (ladies are dumb!). I absolutely wouldn't expect for Sanders to be soft on Hackel's positions or statements. Give her hell, Bernie! But I wish he would have just said "there isn't any difference between the two" rather than reminding everybody that Hackel was a lady. Isn't that the sort of thing a candidate free from the pressure to win can do?
And Sanders' independence mattered in those campaigns. He could say what he liked and call things like he saw them. Journalist Rod Clarke lamented the loss of that voice when Sanders left LU in 1977; despite the party's often overinflated rhetoric, he wrote in an October column, "...they raised issues. And because they were admittedly radical, they could afford the luxury of not having to 'broaden the base' and make the message more acceptable to more people. As the Bennington Banner put it in a recent editorial: 'Liberty Union....did not pretend to be all things to all people… So it would fire sharp questions and watch the politicians squirm.'"
Clarke ended his column with a prediction:
Whatever it does in future, the Liberty Union will probably never be more than a footnote in Vermont history books.How wrong he was.Bernie Sanders will simply turn up as a four-time loser in the polls.
In fact, Sanders had begun to find what would become a winning formula: draw on the appearance of being an outsider, call for economic justice, and engage "that demographic stuff" with caution. But in 1977, it seemed like he was out of electoral politics. He registered the American People's Historical Society as a non-profit in 1977, and produced historical materials for students. (Here are the liner notes for his record about Eugene Debs.)
But then came his now-legendary re-entry into the political arena as Mayor of Burlington.
According to his autobiography, he was persuaded to run for mayor of Burlington by a friend, Richard Sugarman. Using data from Sanders' previous election bid, Sugarman convinced Sanders that he had polled strongly in working class areas of Burlington. During the course of his campaign, Sanders tapped into deep unhappiness with then-current mayor Gordon Paquette, especially over lack of municipal services and an unfair property tax structure; Sanders promised a more just system. He promised to shift the balance of power in landlord-tenant relations away from a system heavily stacked against tenants. He appointed a Women's Council that came up with a number of good gender-related ideas, such as working towards a minimum percentage of women in government and industrial positions. Sanders also managed to get over his old Liberty Union dismissal of environmental preservation as a form of class warfare. Instead, he garnered the support of many higher-income residents when he attacked a plan to build high-rise condos along the city's beautiful waterfront. In reflecting on his electoral success and subsequent years as mayor, Sanders credits "coalition politics" in his autobiography. He writes:
The way to rekindle hope in America, we learned in our small New England town, is to bring people together. After all, most people share things in common with their neighbors. They work hard to make a living, they are concerned with their children, they want to drink clean water and feel safe in their homes.
None of these are bad lessons; however, it's worth noting that Burlington's lessons were necessarily limited in certain ways. A tiny percentage of Burlington's population identified as non-white in the 1980s; by 2000 a little over 90% of Burlington residents were identified as white. In Burlington, there was abundant white privilege to inoculate white politicians from criticism when they failed to address the intersection of race and other oppressions at a local level.
Still, that's not to discard the significant accomplishments of Sanders' time as mayor. I'm not going to re-hash it all here, because there are many pieces out there about his time in the post. According to Peter Drier and Pierre Clavel, Sanders' coalition made good on their promises to tenants, and made real progress in making affordable housing available to working and middle-class city residents. His government launched practical initiatives like bringing the first supermarket to Burlington—a cooperative, rather than a corporate chain. He proved adept at working with business leaders and encouraging environmentally-conscious and worker-centered business in Burlington, such as Seventh generation and Gardener's Supply Co. He has become legendary for his attention to government services, personally working on snow removal when necessary. His government was also involved in establishing Burlington's iconic Waterfront Park, from which Sanders launched his campaign in 2015.
The Park is also emblematic of the muddied waters of who, exactly, was responsible for what in Burlington's success; it has a contested history. At one point, Sanders was ready to accept a plan that included condos and a hotel on the waterfront; what role he played in ultimately rejecting that idea and making new plans is in dispute. At the least, it seems safe to say that Sanders' plans for the waterfront vacillated between preservation and commercial development, negotiating amongst different interests. There's nothing surprising in that, save for Sanders' current fans who view him as an "uncompromising" environmentalist, or radical, or leftist, etc. whatever. In fact, a good deal of his success seems to have come from compromising with business interests. He was becoming a very practical politician indeed.
Yet, bizarrely, Sanders still gets headlines like the Guardian describing him as "unbent, unchanged, and unafraid of a good fight." Like many others, this description is partly premised on a massive misreading of Sanders' time as mayor of Burlington. Paul Lewis, having scrutinized Sanders' archived papers at the University of Vermont, produces a remarkable collection of correspondence between Sanders and a wide variety of global figures. Here he is, writing letters to Margaret Thatcher about IRA prisoners, and to Ronald Reagan, urging him to visit Nicaragua! Here he is, traveling to Cuba and the Soviet Union! And here he is penning yet more epistles to Hu Yaobang of China and Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, urging them to disarm and pursue peace talks with other nations, for the sake of planetary preservation.
It's true that Sanders thought globally, and thought big: nuclear disarmament now! But what the Guardian fails to mention is that at home, he was willing to compromise a little on world peace if it meant good jobs for Vermonters. Here is Sanders, arresting peace activists at home:
Beginning in 1983...protests at the local General Electric armaments plant led to painful arguments: activists wanted a city commitment to peace conversion, Sanders and other progressives preferred to turn the heat on Congress. It was basically a dispute over tactics, but the implications went deeper. By opposing the GE protests and having the protesters arrested, Bernie appeared to protect the corporation and the military-industrial complex behind it. His position also contradicted strong local pronouncements on intervention in Central America. At the very least, Sanders' commitment to an industrially-based socialism was colliding with the community-based peace movement's commitment to ending foreign intervention and violence. The casualties were some mutual trust – and the workers who later lost their jobs as demand for GE's Gatling guns waned.
According to Greg Guma, longtime Burlington journalist (whose vote Sanders didn't want in 1970) and author of two books on Sanders' progressive history in Vermont, Sanders' flurry of letters were actually a part of a wider strategy with peace activists. Burlington became a global voice of international justice, and put those causes into practice where possible—divesting interest form companies doing business in South Africa, for example. But Sanders drew the line at policies that would cause immediate pain to working-class Burlingtonians. "Unbent"? Hardly. Frankly, what kind of successful politician can't bend?
But the subjects of those compromises fits in with my general point about Sanders and his particular set of privileges. As Guma wrote in "Eight Years That Shook Vermont," a 1989 retrospective on Sanders' years in office:
The thrust of reform efforts in Burlington was largely economic, driven by the mayor's "redistribute the wealth" logic. It was not so much that other questions were ignored... Rather it was a matter of priorities and focus. Issues affecting women and the gay community, for example, sometimes took a back seat. Or they were handled indirectly as matters of civil rights and economic justice.Comparable worth, for example, was an economic approach to sexual discrimination, ambitious in intent yet based on concerns about equity discrimination rather than sexual oppression. The city's anti-administration ordinance addressed the problem of discrimination against gay men and women as a matter of civil rights, yet Sanders, among others, was not eager to carry the banner of gay and lesbian rights. Many reforms relating to sexual preference and relations between the sexes did not originate in city hall. Normally, they received cautious support at best.
One striking example was Sanders' response to local feminists about his proposals to prevent job discrimination against gays. "I will not make it a major priority," he said bluntly.
"I will not make it a major priority." Oh.
As I noted in part 1, there have been embarrassingly ahistorical claims made about Sanders and gay rights. As mayor, he was very supportive in some ways. As mayor, he backed Gay Pride events as early as 1983. That was huge in an era when fear of AIDS (among other things) was feeding widespread homophobia in the U.S. and abroad. Nor would it be fair to ignore that, under Sanders, Burlington enacted an anti-housing discrimination reform in housing that included lesbians and gay men, something fairly rare that the time. But he didn't want to commit to making those reforms a priority.
And he could be really shitty about gender.
In 1986, while still serving as Mayor of Burlington, Sanders announced that he would be entering the gubernatorial race against the Democratic incumbent, Madeleine Kunin, and Republican challenger Peter Smith. Kunin had won a difficult race in 1984, breaking the barrier that Stella Hackel did not in 1976, to become Vermont's first female governor. It been a race fraught with tension on Vermont's left. Sanders had established some tentative ties with the Democrats in 1984, endorsing Jesse Jackson in the presidential primaries and joining his Rainbow Coalition in 1984. When Jackson failed to secure the nomination, Sanders campaigned for Mondale and Ferraro in Vermont, his first presidential election campaigning for a Democrat. It was an awkward partnership; as Judy Ashkenaz wrote in her 1986 article "Grassroots Organizing and the Democratic Party—the Vermont Rainbow Experience,"(behind a paywall at Questia) many of the "Democrats grumbled that they didn't need Bernie Sanders to tell them why they should vote for their own party's Democratic candidate." Neither Sanders nor the Rainbow Coalition endorsed Kunin, who still won handily.
But even if Sanders had declined to support Kunin 1984, his announced run against her in 1986 truly puzzled some of his fellow Vermonters. Sanders, in his autobiography, explained that he "feared the 'Burlington Revolution' would suffocate if we didn't expand beyond one city." He describes Kunin as "a liberal, strong on women's issues and the environment" but not on "the property tax, health care, child care, utility rates, the needs of the poor, and involving working people in the political process." He recalls that that liberals "were angry that I was running against a female Democrat, as were some environmentalists."
But Kunin wasn't just "a" female Democrat. She was a successful and popular female governor, with an excellent chance at a second term. Kunin was not only "good on women's issues," she was a feminist, appointing women to formerly all-male boards such as the Labor Relations and Transportation boards. During her time in office, Vermont rose to having the second highest percentage of women in cabinet positons out of all 50 states. In an era when anti-abortion forces were seizing political power, Kunin strongly supported abortion rights. She defended the right of low-income women to state-funded abortions, a position increasingly unpopular and politically costly with Vermont's Catholic voters. She was popular, aided in her re-election by "a prosperous state economy...getting rid of a state government deficit, the promise of a tax cut... and a strong pro-environmental stance in a state where almost everyone is an environmentalist."
And somehow, she managed to meet the "likeability test," that ridiculous balancing act expected of female politicians. Her election coverage, of course, still contained cringe-inducing sexist tropes. The the Philly Reporter noted that some saw her as "lacking boldness" but also "self-aggrandizing," while Jon Margolis of the Chicago Tribune had to contrast her physical appearance ("a rather small, rather slender, 53-year-old") with her political power. But in the same story he noted:
...Vermonters simply like her. Though almost no one says it out loud, people here seem proud of having one of only two woman governors.The strength of her appeal was evident in the response of Mary Johnson of Rutland who described herself, like most Vermonters, as "pretty much of a Republican." When asked about her governor, though, the 63-year-old woman`s eyes lit up and she fairly gushed, "Oh, I like Mrs. Kunin very much."
None of that means Kunin was above criticism on points of diversity (her racial privilege, for example, would be an issue in 1990's Congressional elections) nor on her backdoor political maneuverings (a deal to fire the head of PR for the Agriculture Department in exchange for $25,000 in contracts). Nor does it mean Sanders was in any way outside his rights to challenge her. And he had every right, of course, to bring attention to the issues that he felt passionately about, and on economic issues he could, with credibility, attack her more conservative stances.
But it does mean that his claim liberals were upset because he ran against "a woman" is specious nonsense. Kunin was not just any woman; she was a competent, popular woman with feminist positions, running during a crucial election for women's interests. 1986 was the year in which Vermont's own state E.R.A. came up for a vote in the polls. If ever there was a year for Sanders to show that he could oppose a female candidate without being a dismissive mansplainer, 1986 was it.
(I bet you know how well Sanders rose to that challenge. Sigh.)
"It is absolutely fair to say you are dealing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee," he said in May of Kunin and her Republican opponent Peter Smith, apparently not even acknowledging that Kunin's solid, groundbreaking record on women's issues distinguished her. In fact, feminist Kunin was no match for feminist Sanders '86, at least according to Sanders. His positions on women's issues were "significantly better" than Kunin's, he claimed in an interview with Carol Horner for the Philadelphia Inquirer. And what were those issues? "Working-class women, he said, were concerned about raising the minimum wage and lowering utility rates and property taxes."
(Can I get another sigh? Thanks.)
I've no doubt that it's true Vermont's working class women cared about the minimum wage and property taxes (though the latter probably had significance mainly to women who could afford to own property). But to pick these issues as "women's issues" without at least describing their gendered dimensions was, to put it kindly, a cop-out. When it came to women's issues, Sanders also declined an interview with Vermont Woman magazine, or in the words of its editor, "ended up standing us up without apology." (He did later submit some material in writing, which the editor described as "very strong." Kunin won the magazine's endorsement anyway.)
And of course, Sanders had to man-claim the Vermont ERA for himself. He claimed that "[s]ome people even had said…that his support of a state Equal Rights Amendment, which is proposed in a referendum on the November ballot, was more vigorous than Kunin's." Of course! Kunin politely suggested he was blowing some smoke: "Someone should ask Sanders, she said, about 'the lack of women in his administration.'"
Ouch. (It wasn't the last time somebody called Sanders out for for a lack of diversity in his team.)
Once again, there's a tremendous amount of privilege going on here. I'm willing to believe that someone, somewhere, told Sanders that he had a "more vigorous" support of the Vermont ERA than Kunin did. Why? Because he had the white male privilege of shouting, getting red faced, and blowing his top. That can go a long way towards coming across as "vigorous"! It's a privilege Sanders still benefits from, and he's still getting praised for this privilege. In 2010, Joseph Heilbrunn praised Sanders' filibuster in the Huffington Post by contrasting his style with President Obama's:
Sanders offered the real thing. Real rhetoric, real passion, real indignation. Not artifice, not calculation, not capitulation...The contrast with President Obama could hardly have been starker....The example of the cantankerous Sanders should serve as an object lesson for a White House that is trying to triangulate its way out of electoral disaster. Sometimes it's worth taking a stand.
Readers of this space will immediately understand that President Obama cannot be "cantankerous," because an angry black man is perceived very differently than an angry white man. And no woman, of any race, can afford to match Sanders' trademark bluster and bombast.
And here's the thing: Sanders' privilege is still clouding his view of what happened in 1986. Sanders was defeated, although he mustered 14.5% of the vote. Unfortunately, the Vermont ERA was also defeated. And Sanders picked up a surprising number of voters who also voted against the ERA. In 2014, he interpreted the 1986 result as follows:
I ask him how exactly he plans to convince millions of disaffected Reagan Democrats to stop voting Republican, and he answers by telling a story about his unsuccessful 1986 gubernatorial run. On the ballot that year was a referendum on the Vermont Equal Rights Amendment. "When they came up with the votes, they found a very interesting thing," Sanders says, softening his booming, Brooklyn-inflected voice to emphasize the point. "They had people who were voting 'no' on equal rights and 'yes' for Sanders. And my point is, look: You have a country split on abortion, a country split on gay rights, you have many of these social issues, split on marijuana legalization. But what I believe very strongly is, working [people will] say: 'I disagree with him on abortion rights, I disagree with him on gay rights, but you know what, he's fighting for my kids and I support him.' "
Well, that's one way to analyze it! Here's another: Sanders picked up the votes of a certain percentage of sexists who didn't like women's rights or a woman governor.
(How's that? How am I doing as an elections analyst? Can I get hired by news agency to state the blatantly obvious?)
Vermont voters knew Sanders wasn't going to win, so a vote for him made a perfect protest vote for people who didn't like the ERA and also didn't care to vote for the feminist, Kunin. If they also didn't want to vote for the relatively liberal Republican Peter Smith, who was left but the angry white guy? Maybe they even picked him for, ah, "demographic reasons."
I'm sure he did get votes from people who really did like him and his policies, but I bet that many of those also voted for the ERA. Maybe he did, in addition, get some enthusiastic non-protest votes from people who loved his economics despite his social liberalism, as Sanders claims. But for Sanders to claim that's the whole truth—well, there's his male privilege showing again. He would like to leave gender out of the analysis, so poof! It goes away. But wishful thinking does not a good election strategy make.
And speaking of wishful thinking: Sanders' political record as the 1980s turned into the 1990s reveals something of a rightward turn. He also started making compromises on his "independent" status, compromises that would net him the first of a still-unbroken string of statewide electoral victories. In tomorrow's "Looking for Bernie, Part 3: Sanders '90," we'll take a look at how that happened.
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