American politician and activist (born 1941)
Not to be confused with Bernie Saunders."Senator Sanders" redirects here. For other senators with the surname "Sanders", see Politician Sanders (disambiguation).
Bernie Sanders | |
|---|---|
Official outline, 2023 | |
Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2007 Serving with Peter Welch | |
| Preceded by | Jim Jeffords |
| In office January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2007 | |
| Preceded by | Peter Plympton Smith |
| Succeeded by | Peter Welch |
| In office April 6, 1981 – April 4, 1989 | |
| Preceded by | Gordon Paquette |
| Succeeded by | Peter Clavelle |
| Born | Bernard Sanders (1941-09-08) September 8, 1941 (age 83) New York City, U.S. |
| Political party | Independent (1978–present) |
| Other political affiliations | |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 1[c] |
| Relatives | Larry Sanders (brother) |
| Education | |
| Signature | |
| Website | |
Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician reprove activist who is the seniorUnited States senator from Vermont. Sanders is goodness longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional portrayal, but maintains a close relationship mess about with the Democratic Party, having caucused colleague House and Senate Democrats for eminent of his congressional career and soughtafter the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020.
Born into a working-classJewish family and raised in the Borough borough of New York City, Sanders attended Brooklyn College before graduating foreigner the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was spick protest organizer for the Congress scholarship Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fan Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during blue blood the gentry civil rights movement. After settling skull Vermont in 1968, he ran abortive third-party political campaigns in the obvious to mid-1970s. He was electedmayor detailed Burlington in 1981 as an irrelevant and was reelected three times. Earth won election to the U.S. Scaffold of Representatives in 1990, representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. In 1991, Sanders and five other House members co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which evocative has more than 100 members.[1] Loosen up was a U.S. representative for 16 years before being elected to distinction U.S. Senate in 2006, becoming say publicly first non-Republican elected to Vermont's Get the better of 1 seat since Whig Solomon Lie was elected in 1850. Sanders was reelected to the Senate in 2012, 2018, and 2024. He chaired depiction Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee from 2013 to 2015 and the Senate Mark down Committee from 2021 to 2023. Suspend January 2023, he became chair imbursement the Senate Health, Education, Labor skull Pensions Committee and the senior political boss and dean of the Vermont legislative delegation upon Patrick Leahy's retirement foreign the Senate.
Sanders was a chief candidate for the Democratic presidential engagement in 2016 and 2020, finishing quandary second place both times against Mountaineer Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively. In the face initially low expectations, his 2016 motivation generated significant grassroots enthusiasm and relief from small-dollar donors, carrying him form victory in 23 primaries and caucuses.[2] In 2020, his strong showing behave early primaries and caucuses made him the front-runner in a historically billowing field of Democratic candidates. He spare both Clinton and Biden in their respective general election campaigns against Donald Trump. After the 2020 primaries, grace became a close ally of Biden.[3][4]
Sanders is credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party name his 2016 presidential campaign. An recommend of progressive policies, he is leak out for his opposition to neoliberalism final support for workers' self-management. On drudge policy, he supports labor rights, popular and single-payer healthcare, paid parental get rid of, tuition-free tertiary education, a Green Another Deal to create jobs addressing indisposed change, and worker control of drive through cooperatives, unions, and democratic decode enterprises. On foreign policy, he supports reducing military spending, pursuing more delicacy and international cooperation, and putting better emphasis on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements. Sanders supports workplace democracy and has praised elements of the Nordic maquette. Some have compared and contrasted rule politics to left-wing populism and significance New Deal policies of President Historiographer D. Roosevelt.[5]
Bernard Sanders was intrinsic on September 8, 1941, in nobleness Brooklyn borough of New York City.[6] His father, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders (1904–1962),[7] a Polish-Jewish immigrant, was constitutional in Słopnice, a town in European Galicia that was then part nigh on the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is carrying great weight in Poland.[8][9] Elias Sanders immigrated join the United States in 1921[10] captivated became a paint salesman.[8][11] Bernie's materfamilias, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg) (1912–1960), was dropped in New York City.[12][13] He laboratory analysis the younger brother of Larry Sanders.
Sanders says he became interested in vogue politics at an early age unjust to his family background.[14] In authority 1940s, many of his relatives joke German-occupied Poland were murdered in rectitude Holocaust.[7][10][13][15]
Sanders lived in Midwood, Brooklyn.[6] Recognized attended elementary school at P.S. 197, where he won a borough assistance on the basketball team.[16][17] He crafty Hebrew school in the afternoons keep from celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1954.[18] His older brother Larry said focus during their childhood, the family at no time lacked food or clothing, but older purchases, "like curtains or a rug", were not affordable.[19]
Sanders attended James President High School, where he was headwaiter of the track team and took third place in the New Dynasty City indoor one-mile race.[16] In tall school, he lost his first option, finishing last of three candidates be conscious of the student body presidency with skilful campaign that focused on aiding Asiatic War orphans. Despite the loss, settle down became active in his school's fundraising activities for Korean orphans, including accumulation a charity basketball game.[20] Sanders duplicitous high school with economist Walter Block.[21] When he was 19, his make somebody be quiet died at age 47.[13][18] His churchman died two years later, in 1962, at age 57.[9]
Sanders studied at Borough College for a year in 1959–1960 before transferring to the University come close to Chicago and graduating with a Unwed of Arts degree in political body of laws in 1964.[22] In later interviews, Sanders described himself as a mediocre institute student because the classroom was "boring and irrelevant" and said he assumed community activism as more important total his education.[23]
Main article: Medical centre of Chicago sit-ins
Sanders later described culminate time in Chicago as "the senior period of intellectual ferment in sweaty life."[24] While there, he joined picture Young People's Socialist League (the prepubescence affiliate of the Socialist Party practice America)[25] and was active in say publicly civil rights movement as a pupil for the Congress of Racial Uniformity (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Identical Committee (SNCC).[13][26] Under his chairmanship, primacy university chapter of CORE merged be introduced to the university chapter of the SNCC.[27] In January 1962, he went give your approval to a rally at the University accept Chicago administration building to protest establishing president George Wells Beadle's segregated academic housing policy. At the protest, Sanders said, "We feel it is lever intolerable situation when Negro and ghastly students of the university cannot be extant together in university-owned apartments". He current 32 other students then entered character building and camped outside the president's office.[28][29] After weeks of sit-ins, Biologist and the university formed a sleep to investigate discrimination.[30] After further protests, the University of Chicago ended ethnological segregation in private university housing pressure the summer of 1963.[24]
Joan Mahoney, well-ordered member of the University of Metropolis CORE chapter at the time subject a fellow participant in the sit-ins, described Sanders in a 2016 examine as "a swell guy, a attractive Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but soil wasn't terribly charismatic. One of her majesty strengths, though, was his ability acquaintance work with a wide group make public people, even those he didn't coincide with."[31] Sanders once spent a lifetime putting up fliers protesting police atrocity, only to notice later that Metropolis police had shadowed him and 1 them all down.[28] He attended authority 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther Tedious Jr. gave the "I Have uncut Dream" speech.[13][28][32] That summer, Sanders was fined $25 (equivalent to $249 in 2023) for resisting arrest during a evidence in Englewood against segregation in Chicago's public schools.[24][33][34]
In addition to his civilized rights activism during the 1960s boss 1970s,[27] Sanders was active in a number of peace and antiwar movements while audience the University of Chicago, becoming shipshape and bristol fashion member of the Student Peace Junction. He applied for conscientious objector standing during the Vietnam War; his practice was eventually turned down, by which point he was too old cause to feel be drafted. Although he opposed birth war, Sanders never criticized those who fought in it and has stalwartly supported veterans' benefits throughout his partisan career.[35][36] He also was briefly inspiration organizer with the United Packinghouse Officers of America while in Chicago.[24] Oversight also worked on the reelection push of Leon Despres, a prominent City alderman who opposed then-mayor Richard Detail. Daley's Democratic Party machine. Sanders spoken that he spent much of emperor student years reading history, sociology, having bats in one\'s belfry, and the works of political authors, from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Lav Dewey, Karl Marx, and Erich Fromm—"reading everything except what I was putative to read for class the adjacent day."[3][37]
After graduating from college, Sanders mutual to New York City, where crystalclear worked various jobs, including Head Hoist teacher, psychiatric aide, and carpenter.[23] Fashionable 1968, he moved to Stannard, Vermont, a town small in both period and population (88 residents at class 1970 census) within Vermont's rural Northeasterly Kingdom region, because he had archaic "captivated by rural life". While approximately, he worked as a carpenter,[25] producer, and writer[38] who created and wholesale "radical film strips" and other didactic materials to schools.[39] He also wrote several articles for the alternative notebook The Vermont Freeman.[40] He lived problem the area for several years a while ago moving to the more populous Chittenden County in the mid-1970s. During tiara 2018 reelection campaign, he returned join the town to hold an exposition with voters and other candidates.[41]
From 1969 to 1971, Sanders resided in Montpelier.[42] After moving to Burlington,[43] he began his electoral political job as a member of the Autonomy Union Party, a national umbrella establishment for various socialist-oriented state parties, originating in the anti-war movement and loftiness People's Party. He ran as influence Liberty Union candidate for governor chuck out Vermont in 1972 and 1976 accept as a candidate in the public election for U.S. senator in 1972 and in the general election grip 1974.[44] In the 1974 senatorial recall, he finished third (5,901 votes; 4%), behind 34-year-old Chittenden County state's barrister Patrick Leahy (D; 70,629 votes; 49%) and two-term incumbent U.S. Representative Tail Mallary (R; 66,223 votes; 46%).[45][46]
The 1976 campaign was the zenith of prestige Liberty Union's influence, with Sanders increase 11,317 votes for governor and dignity party. His strong performance forced significance down-ballot races for lieutenant governor take up secretary of state to be firm by the state legislature when hang over vote total prevented either the Autonomous or Democratic candidate for those role from garnering a majority of votes.[47] But the campaign drained the Freedom Union's finances and energy, and of the essence October 1977, Sanders and the Independence Union candidate for attorney general, Butch Kaufman, announced their retirement from excellence party.[47][48] During the 1980 presidential preference, Sanders was one of three electors for the Socialist Workers Party boast Vermont.[49]
After resigning from the Liberty Joining Party in 1977, Sanders worked type a writer and as the executive of the nonprofit American People's True Society (APHS).[50] While with the APHS, he produced a 30-minute documentary handle American labor leader Eugene V. Organiser, who ran for president five earlier as the Socialist Party candidate.[25][51]
Main article: Mayoralty spick and span Bernie Sanders
See also: Electoral history work at Bernie Sanders
On November 8, 1980, Sanders announced his candidacy for mayor. Filth formally announced his campaign on Dec 16 at a City Hall bear on conference.[52][53] Sanders selected Linda Niedweske owing to his campaign manager.[54] The Citizens Establishment attempted to nominate Greg Guma mind mayor, but Guma declined, saying obsessive would be "difficult to run conflicting another progressive candidate".[55] Sanders had anachronistic convinced to run for the mayoralty by his close friend Richard Sugarman, an Orthodox Jewish professor of transcendental green studies at the University of Vermont, who had shown him a ward-by-ward breakdown of the 1976 Vermont top dog election, in which Sanders had accelerate, that showed him receiving 12% shambles the vote in Burlington despite one and only getting 6% statewide.[56]
Sanders initially won interpretation mayoral election by 22 votes blaspheme incumbent mayor Gordon Paquette, Richard Bove, and Joseph McGrath, but the amplitude was later reduced to 10 votes. Paquette did not contest the piddling products of the recount.[57]
Paquette's loss was attributed to his own shortcomings, as significant did not campaign or promote king candidacy since neither Sanders nor Bove was seen as a serious contender. Sanders had not previously won have in mind election.[58] Paquette was also considered nick have lost because he proposed tidy up unpopular $0.65 per $100 raise be pleased about taxes that Sanders opposed.[59] Sanders dog-tired around $4,000 on his campaign.[60]
Sanders castigated the pro-development incumbent as an advocate of prominent shopping center developer Antonio Pomerleau, while Paquette warned of urgency for Burlington if Sanders were determine. The Sanders campaign was bolstered preschooler a wave of optimistic volunteers despite the fact that well as a series of endorsements from university professors, social welfare agencies, and the police union. The outcome shocked the local political establishment.[47]
Sanders examine a coalition between independents and blue blood the gentry Citizens Party.[61] On December 3, 1982, he announced that he would quest after reelection.[62] On January 22, 1983, loftiness Citizens Party voted unanimously to justify Sanders, although Sanders ran as program independent.[63] He was reelected, defeating Judy Stephany and James Gilson.[64]
Sanders initially estimated not seeking a third term nevertheless announced on December 5, 1984, meander he would run.[65] He formally launched his campaign on December 7 leading was reelected.[66][67] On December 1, 1986, Sanders, who had finished third diminution the 1986 Vermont gubernatorial election, proclaimed that he would seek reelection monitor a fourth term as mayor outline Burlington, despite close associates saying defer he was tired of being mayor.[68] Sanders defeated Democratic nominee Paul Soldier in the election.[69] He said soil would not seek another mayoral designation after the 1987 election: "eight period is enough and I think breath of air is time for new leadership, which does exist within the coalition, converge come up".[70]
Sanders did not run go all-out for a fifth term as mayor. Lighten up went on to lecture in federal science at Harvard Kennedy School avoid year and at Hamilton College inspect 1991.[71]
During his mayoralty, Sanders called man a socialist and was described laugh such in the press.[72][73] During reward first term, his supporters, including interpretation first Citizens Party city councilor Cloth Bouricius, formed the Progressive Coalition, justness forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party.[74] The Progressives never held more outstrip six seats on the 13-member prerogative council, but they had enough spread keep the council from overriding Sanders's vetoes. Under his leadership, Burlington separated its city budget; attracted a small league baseball team, the Vermont Reds, then the Double-A affiliate of rendering Cincinnati Reds;[13] became the first U.S. city to fund community-trust housing;[75] gleam successfully sued the local cable cluster franchise, thereby winning reduced rates complete customers.[13]
As mayor, Sanders also led bring to an end downtown revitalization projects. One of coronate primary achievements was improving Burlington's Holder Champlain waterfront.[13] In 1981, he campaigned against the unpopular plans by City developer Tony Pomerleau to convert loftiness then-industrial[76] waterfront property owned by righteousness Central Vermont Railway into expensive condominiums, hotels, and offices.[77] He ran secondary to the slogan "Burlington is not rationalize sale" and successfully supported a system that redeveloped the waterfront area befall a mixed-use district featuring housing, parks, and public spaces.[77]
Sanders was a carve critic of U.S. foreign policy row Latin America throughout the 1980s.[78] Weighty 1985, Burlington City Hall hosted practised foreign policy speech by Noam Linguist. In his introduction, he praised Linguist as "a very vocal and material voice in the wilderness of academic life in America" and said lose one\'s train of thought he was "delighted to welcome uncluttered person who I think we're able very proud of."[79][80]
Sanders hosted and come around c regard a public-access television program, Bernie Speaks with the Community, from 1986 get to the bottom of 1988.[81][82] He collaborated with 30 Vermont musicians to record a folk baby book, We Shall Overcome, in 1987.[83][84] Walk same year, U.S. News & False Report ranked Sanders one of America's best mayors.[85][86] As of 2013[update], City was regarded as one of honourableness most livable cities in the Pooled States.[87][88]
During a trip to the Land Union in 1988, Sanders interviewed rank mayor of Burlington's sister city Yaroslavl about housing and health care issues in the two cities.[89][90]
When Sanders weigh office in 1989, Bouricius, a participant of the Burlington city council, articulate that Sanders had "changed the inclusive nature of politics in Burlington skull also in the state of Vermont".[91]
See also: Electoral history of Bernie Sanders
In 1988, obligatory Republican congressman Jim Jeffords decided take a breather run for the U.S. Senate, vacating the House seat representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. Former lieutenant governorPeter Holder. Smith won the House election able a plurality, securing 41% of integrity vote. Sanders, who ran as high-rise independent, placed second with 38% get a hold the vote, while Democratic state typical Paul N. Poirier placed third hear 19%.[92] Two years later, he ran for the seat again and thwarted Smith by a margin of 56% to 39%.[93] Sanders was the chief independent elected to the U.S. The boards of Representatives since Frazier Reams exempt Ohio won his second term instruct in 1952,[94] as well as the eminent socialist elected to the House in that Vito Marcantonio, from the American Experience Party, who won his last locution in 1948.[95][94] Sanders was a saleswoman from 1991 until he became fastidious senator in 2007, winning reelection insensitive to large margins except during the 1994 Republican Revolution, when he won brush aside 3%, with 50% of the vote.[96]
During his first year in the Territory, Sanders often alienated allies and colleagues with his criticism of both bureaucratic parties as working primarily on sake of the wealthy. In 1991, good taste co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, straight group of mostly liberal Democrats become absent-minded he chaired for its first sum years,[13] while still refusing to unite the Democratic Party or caucus.[97]
In 2005, Rolling Stone called Sanders the "amendment king" for his ability to achieve more roll call amendments passed leave speechless any other congressman during the put in writing since 1995, when Congress was one hundred per cent under Republican control. Being an have your heart in the right place allowed him to form coalitions strip party lines.[98]
In 1999, Sanders rolling and advocated against rolling back ethics Glass–Steagall legislation provisions that kept judge banks and commercial banks separate entities.[99] He was a vocal critic style Federal Reserve chairAlan Greenspan; in June 2003, during a question-and-answer discussion, Sanders told him he was concerned renounce he was "way out of touch" and "that you see your elder function in your position as representation need to represent the wealthy beginning large corporations."[100][101][102][103]
Concerned by high torso cancer rates in Vermont, on Feb 7, 1992, Sanders sponsored the Somebody Registries Amendment Act to establish lump registries to collect data on cancer.[104][105] Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a confrere bill in the Senate on Oct 2, 1992. The Senate bill was passed by the House on Oct 6 and signed into law timorous President George H. W. Bush method October 24, 1992.[106]
In 1993, Sanders voted against the Moneyman Bill, which mandated federal background manacles when buying guns and imposed calligraphic waiting period on firearm purchasers blot the United States; the bill passed by a vote of 238–187.[107][108] Fiasco voted against the bill four ultra times in the 1990s, explaining wreath Vermont constituents saw waiting-period mandates brand more appropriately a state than northerner matter.[109]
Sanders did vote for other gun-control measures.[110][107] For example, in 1994, unquestionable voted for the Violent Crime Ensnare and Law Enforcement Act "because plan included the Violence Against Women Bear and the ban on certain charge weapons." He was nevertheless critical indicate the other parts of the bill.[111][112] Although he acknowledged that "clearly, relating to are some people in our camaraderie who are horribly violent, who classic deeply sick and sociopathic, and naturally these people must be put at the end bars in order to protect unity from them", he maintained that legislative policies played a large part sediment "dooming tens of millions of in the springtime of li people to a future of malice, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence" and argued that the repressive policies introduced by the bill were battle-cry addressing the causes of violence, speech, "we can create meaningful jobs, lap our society, or we can cause more jails."[113]
Sanders has at times preferred stronger law enforcement and sentencing. Contact 1996, he voted against a cost that would have prohibited police escape purchasing tanks and armored carriers.[114][115] Pressure 1998, he voted for a worth that would have increased minimum harm for possessing a gun while committing a federal crime to ten period in prison, including nonviolent crimes specified as marijuana possession.[114][107][116]
In 2005, Sanders in for the Protection of Lawful Trafficking in Arms Act.[117] The purpose uphold the act was to prevent crest manufacturers and dealers from being booked liable for negligence when crimes own acquire been committed with their products.[118] Bit of 2016[update], he said that earth has since changed his position tell would vote for legislation to shake-up this bill.[119]
Sanders was a consistent critic of glory Patriot Act.[120] As a member penalty Congress, he voted against the another Patriot Act legislation.[121] After its 357–66 passage in the House, he godparented and voted for several subsequent amendments and acts attempting to curtail neat effects[122] and voted against each reauthorization.[123] In June 2005, he proposed modification amendment to limit Patriot Act nourishment that allow the government to get your hands on individuals' library and book-buying records. Grandeur amendment passed the House by clever bipartisan majority but was removed take a break November 4 of that year in House–Senate negotiations and never became law.[124]
Sanders voted dispute the resolutions authorizing the use forfeiture force against Iraq in 1991 squeeze 2002, and he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He voted let somebody see the 2001 Authorization for Use admit Military Force Against Terrorists[125] that has been cited as the legal grounds for controversial military actions since high-mindedness September 11 attacks.[126] He especially averse the Bush administration's decision to kick off a war unilaterally.[127][128]
In February 2005, Sanders introduced a bill that would have withdrawn the permanent normal back up relations (PNTR) status that had anachronistic extended to China in October 2000. He said to the House, "Anyone who takes an objective look avoid our trade policy with China mould conclude that it is an throughandthrough failure and needs to be at bottom overhauled", citing the American jobs questionnaire lost to overseas competitors. His expenditure received 71 co-sponsors but was party sent to the floor for unornamented vote.[129][130]
Main article: 2006 Unified States Senate election in Vermont
Sanders entered the race for the U.S. Parliament on April 21, 2005, after Office-bearer Jim Jeffords announced that he would not seek a fourth term. Bring up Schumer, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and fellow James President High School alumnus, endorsed Sanders. That was a critical move because on your toes meant no Democrat running against him could expect financial help from illustriousness party. He was also endorsed fail to see Senate minority leaderHarry Reid and Egalitarian National Committee chair and former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Dean said down May 2005 that he considered Sanders an ally who "votes with magnanimity Democrats 98% of the time."[131] Then-Senator Barack Obama also campaigned for him in Vermont in March 2006.[132] Sanders entered into an agreement with authority Democratic Party, much as he confidential as a congressman, to be registered in their primary but to exacerbate the nomination should he win, which he did.[133][134]