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OpEdNews

 Bernie Sanders

U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders Speech at The Brookings Institution

Washington, D.C. February 9, 2015

Let me thank The Brookings Institution for hosting this event, E.J. Dionne for moderating it, and all of you for coming out this morning. I appreciate your being here very much.

Before I begin my remarks let me say a few words about myself and how I got here, because my journey here has been, to say the least, a little bit different than many others who have been on this platform.

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941. My father came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a penny in his pocket and without much of an education. My mother graduated high school in New York City. My family was never really poor, but we never had much money. My father was a paint salesman and we were solidly lower-middle class. My parents, brother and I lived in a small rent-controlled apartment. As a kid, I learned what lack of money means to a family. That’s a lesson I have never forgotten.

As the longest serving Independent in American congressional history, let me briefly describe to you my political journey.

In 1971, in a special election held to fill the seat of deceased senator, I ran for the U.S. Senate on a small third party in Vermont called the Liberty Union. I received 2 percent of the vote. A year later, in the general election, I ran for governor of Vermont. I received 1 percent of the vote. Two years later, in 1974, I ran for the Senate again and received 4 percent of the vote. Two years after that I ran for governor and received 6 percent of the vote.

I thought I would give the people of Vermont a break — and I retired form politics in 1976. In 1981, I was persuaded by some friends to run for mayor of Burlington, the largest city in the state, against a five-term Democratic mayor. I ran as an Independent. Nobody but nobody thought we had a chance to win.

In that very remarkable election, we put together an extraordinary coalition of workers and unions, of environmentalists, of neighborhood activists who opposed major road construction through their communities, of-low income organizations, of women’s groups, of college students. And that type of coalition politics — of bringing people together around a progressive agenda — shapes my view of politics to this very day. I should also state that that entire campaign cost something like $4,000 — and I knocked on thousands of doors in the city.

On election night, when the votes were counted, we won the working-class wards by something like 2-1 and won the election by all of 14 votes. It was the biggest political upset in modern Vermont history. After the recount, the margin of victory was reduced to 10 votes.

Without going into great lengths here, I took office with 11 out of 13 members of the City Council — the Democrats and Republicans — in very strong opposition to my agenda. Trust me. If you think the Republicans have been obstructionist to President Obama during his time in office, that was nothing compared to what my supporters and I experienced. But, one year later, in strong support of what I and my coalition had accomplished and wanted to do, a slate of candidates that I supported for the City Council defeated a number of the incumbent obstructionists. A year after that, in an election in which the voter turnout was almost double what it had been when I was first elected, I pretty easily defeated the Democratic and Republican candidates, and did so in two more elections. I decided not to run for re-election in 1989.

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