Bernie Sanders

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bernie Sanders
Image:BernieSanders2006.jpg
Junior Senator-elect, Vermont
Term of office: term begins 2007
Political party:	Independent _{Caucuses with the Democratic Party.}
Succeeding:	Jim Jeffords
Born:	September 8, 1941 New York City, New York
Spouse:	Jane O'Meara
Religion:	Jewish

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is a United States Representative and current Senator-elect from Vermont. He has represented Vermont's at-large district in the United States House of Representatives since 1991.

Sanders is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats and is counted as a Democrat for the purposes of committee assignments. He is the only independent member of the House, and one of very few self-described democratic socialists elected to federal office in the United States in recent times; he is also the first self-described socialist to be elected to the U.S. Senate.<ref name="firstsocsen">Borger, Julian. "Democrats pile pressure on Bush as glitches hit US poll", Guardian, 2006-11-08. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.</ref> Sanders vacated his House seat in order to run in the 2006 election for the Senate seat to be vacated by the retiring Jim Jeffords and won the election with 65% of the vote.<ref name="CNNresults">U.S. Senate / Vermont. America Votes 2006. CNN. Retrieved on 2006-11-09.</ref>

1 Early life
2 Early political career
3 In the House of Representatives
4 Senate campaign
5 Personal life and trivia
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Early life

Sanders, the son of a Jewish Polish immigrant to the United States, was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Madison High School in Brooklyn and later attended the University of Chicago, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964.

Sanders moved to Vermont in 1964. He worked as a carpenter and journalist.

[edit] Early political career

Sanders' political career began in 1971, when he joined the anti-Vietnam War Liberty Union Party in Vermont. Sanders was an unsuccessful independent candidate for election to the Senate in 1972 and 1974, as well as for governor of Vermont in 1972, 1976 and 1986. In his initial campaign Sanders received only two percent of the vote, but in subsequent races for Senate and Governor were slightly more successful, with Sanders' highest vote tally being six percent.

In 1977, Sanders resigned from the Liberty Union party and worked as a writer and the director of the non-profit American People's Historical Society. In 1981, at the suggestion of his friend Richard Sugarman, a religion professor at the University of Vermont, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington and defeated six-term Democratic incumbent Gordon Paquette by 10 votes, in a three-way contest. (An independent candidate, Richard Bove, split the Democratic vote after losing the primary to Paquette).

Increasingly popular because of his successful revitalization of Burlington's downtown area, Sanders won three more terms, defeating both Democratic and Republican candidates. In his last run for mayor, in 1987, he defeated a candidate endorsed by both major parties.

During his first term, supporters of Sanders formed the Progressive Coalition, forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party. The Progressives never held more than six seats on the 13-member city council, but held enough votes to keep the council from overriding Sanders's vetoes. Under Sanders, Burlington became the first city in the country to fund community-trust housing. His administration also sued the local cable television provider and won considerably reduced rates and a substantial cash settlement.

Sanders ran for governor for the third time in 1986. He finished third with 14.5 percent of the vote, which was enough to deny incumbent Democrat Madeleine Kunin a majority; she was elected by the state legislature. In 1988, when six-term incumbent Representative Jim Jeffords made a successful run for the Senate, Sanders ran for Jefford's vacated seat in the House. Sanders narrowly lost to Peter P. Smith, the former lieutenant governor and the 1986 Republican candidate for governor. Sanders again ran against Smith in 1990. In one of the biggest upsets in recent political history, he took 56 percent of the vote and defeated Smith by 16 points, becoming the first independent member of the House since 1950.

Sanders was a member of the faculty at Harvard University in 1989 and of Hamilton College in 1991.

[edit] In the House of Representatives

Although relations between Sanders and House Democratic leadership were not always smooth, the Democrats had not actively campaigned against Sanders since his first run for Congress. While Democratic candidates have run against him in every election except 1994 (when Sanders managed to win the Democrats' endorsement), they received little financial support.

Sanders was reelected six times and was the longest-serving independent member of the House. Despite his independent status, he only faced one difficult contest. That came in 1994, in the midst of the Republican Revolution that swept Republicans into control of the Congress. In a year when many marginal seats fell to Republicans, Sanders managed a narrow three-point victory. In every other election, he has won at least 55 percent of the vote. Most recently, in 2004, Sanders took 69 percent to Republican Greg Parke's 24 percent and Democrat Larry Drown's 7 percent.

Sanders' lifetime legislative score from the AFL-CIO is 100 percent. In contrast, as of 2006, he has a grade of "C-" from the National Rifle Association (NRA). Sanders voted against the Brady Bill and in favor of a NRA-supported bill to restrict lawsuits against gun manufacturers in 2005.[1] Sanders voted to abolish the so-called "marriage penalty" and also for a bill that sought to ban human cloning. Sanders has endorsed every Democratic candidate for president of the United States since 1992. Sanders is a co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus and chaired the grouping of mostly left-wing Democrats for its first eight years.

Sanders voted against both resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 and 2002 and opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He later joined almost all of his colleagues in voting for a non-binding resolution expressing support for U.S. troops at the outset of the invasion, although he gave a floor speech blasting the partisan nature of the resolution and the Bush administration's actions in the run-up to the war. In relation to the leak investigation involving Valerie Plame, on April 7, 2006, Sanders said, "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." [2]

Sanders supports universal health care and opposes what he terms "unfettered" free trade [3], which he argues deprives American workers of their jobs while exploiting foreign workers in sweat-shop factories.

An amendment he offered in June 2005 to limit provisions giving the government power to obtain individuals' library and book-buying records passed the House by a bipartisan majority, but was removed on November 4 of that year by House-Senate negotiators, and never became law. [4] Sanders followed this vote on November 5, 2005 by voting against the Online Freedom of Speech Act, which would have exempted the Internet from the restrictions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Bill).

In March 2006, Sanders stated it would be impractical, given the "reality that the Republicans control the House and the Senate", to impeach George W. Bush after a series of resolutions calling for him to bring articles of impeachment against the president passed in various towns in Vermont. Still, Sanders makes no secret of his opposition to the George W. Bush administration, which he has regularly attacked for cuts in social programs he supports.[5], [6], [7]

Sanders has also criticized Alan Greenspan. In June 2003, during a question-and-answer discussion with then-Federal Reserve 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." [8]

Republicans have attacked Sanders as "an ineffective extremist" for passing only one law and fifteen amendments in his eight terms in the House.[9], [10] Sanders responded by saying that he had passed "the most floor amendments of any member of the House since 1996." [11] Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean has stated that "Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time." [12]

[edit] Senate campaign

Main article: Vermont United States Senate election, 2006

Bernie Sanders had mentioned on several occasions that he would run for the Senate if longtime friend Jim Jeffords were ever to retire, and entered the race on April 21, 2005 following Jeffords's announcement that he would not seek a fourth term. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, endorsed Sanders; Schumer's backing was critical, as it meant that any Democrat running against Sanders could not expect to receive any significant financial help on a national level. 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 voted with House Democrats. Senator Barack Obama also campaigned for Sanders in Vermont. Sanders entered into an agreement with the Democratic Party to be listed in their primary but to decline the nomination should he win, which he did easily.<ref>"U.S. Senate: Tarrant-Sanders duel set", Burlington Free Press, 2006-09-12. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.</ref>

Sanders consistently led his Republican challenger, businessman Richard Tarrant, by wide margins in polling. He defeated Tarrant by an approximately 2-to-1 margin in the 2006 midterm election. Many national media outlets (including CNN) projected Sanders the winner before any returns came in.

Sanders will be only the third Senator from Vermont to caucus with the Democrats--behind Jeffords and his soon-to-be colleague, Patrick Leahy. He has made a deal with the Democratic leadership similar to the one Jeffords made after Jeffords became an independent, in which he votes with them on all procedural matters except with permission of the whip, which would be rarely asked and rarely granted, in exchange for the committee seats that would be available to him as a Democrat. He is free to vote as he pleases on policy matters. In his first Senate term, Sanders will serve on the Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions, the Committee on the Budget, the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Committee on Aging.

[edit] Personal life and trivia

Bernie's brother, Larry Sanders, is a Green Party politician in the county of Oxfordshire in England. His nephew, Jacob, is a former Oxford city councillor for the Greens.
Sanders has been a longtime friend of free-market economist Walter Block.
Bernie Sanders has regular guest appearances on the Thom Hartmann radio program for the Friday segment "Brunch with Bernie."
He is married to Jane O'Meara, president of Burlington College, and has one son, Levi Sanders, from a previous marriage. [13]
Bernie played the part of Rabbi Manny Shevitz in the 2001 comedy My X-Girlfriend's Wedding Reception starring singer and Broadway performer Deborah Gibson.

[edit] External links

[edit] Official sites

[edit] Interviews

[edit] Articles by Sanders

How a Bad Bill Becomes Law by Bernie Sanders
The Collapse of the Middle Class by Bernie Sanders
Free Trade Means America’s Biggest Export is its Jobs by Bernie Sanders
Ground Control to Mr. Bush by Bernie Sanders
Falling Behind In Boom Times by Bernie Sanders
A Year of Contrasts: Courage, Sacrifice and...Corporate Greed by Bernie Sanders
The Export-Import Bank: Corporate Welfare At Its Worst by Bernie Sanders
U.S. Needs A Political Revolution by Bernie Sanders
Remote Control by Bernie Sanders
Censorship of the Media Creating Insidious Chill on Free Expression on our Airwaves by Bernie Sanders
The USA Patriot Act: What Are You Reading? by Bernie Sanders

[edit] Articles about Sanders

Vermont poised to elect America's first socialist senator
Being Like Bernie by John Nichols
Geoffrey Norman, National Review, "Get Ready for Senator Bernie" (10 April 2006)
A Socialist in the Senate? by Matthew Rothschild
Rep. Bernie Sanders vs. Chairman Alan Greenspan
Congress Can No Longer Ignore Corporate Control of the Media
Bernie Sanders: Alone in the House
Bernie Sanders "On the Issues"
Bernie Sanders' Campaign Finance
Project Vote Smart - Political Profile
Vermont Election Results - U. S. House of Representatives, 1791-2004
Voting record maintained by the Washington Post
Exceedingly Social, But Doesn't Like Parties - Washington Post

[edit] References

Political offices
Preceded by: Gordon Paquette	Mayor of Burlington 1981–1989	Succeeded by: Peter Clavelle
Preceded by: Peter P. Smith	United States Representative for the At Large Congressional District of Vermont 1991- Ends January 2007	Succeeded by: Peter Welch
Preceded by: James Jeffords	United States Senator (Class 1) from Vermont Term Starts January 2007	Succeeded by: Incumbent