BERNIE’S OPPORTUNITY TO RUN for the U.S. Senate came to us as a bit of a surprise. I was heading into the House office when my phone rang. It was Luke Albee, Senator Leahy’s then chief of staff. “Jim Jeffords is going to announce that he’s not running for reelection,” he reported. In Vermont politics, this news was a bombshell. I immediately hung up and called Bernie. “I think you have to run,” I told him. I was not sure it would be his view. He didn’t need my encouragement. He was in.
Bernie running for the Senate was very much in keeping with the tradition in Vermont. Vermont has only one congressional district, and it had been customary in Vermont politics for the House member to ascend to the Senate once there was a vacancy. Jim Jeffords had been the House member when Bob Stafford retired and had successfully run for the seat. Congressman Richard Mallory was widely expected to win the open Senate seat in 1974 but was upset in the post-Watergate era by Chittenden County prosecutor Pat Leahy.
As I was living in the DC area and the campaign was going to be run out of Vermont, I was charged with finding a campaign manager for the effort. Every day for a week Bernie and I would go over a list of names of potential candidates. After a week Bernie asked me to run it myself. I’d end up commuting weekly to Vermont for the last six months of the campaign.
He and I both realized, though, that this campaign was going to be entirely different from the many House races he had run. The stakes nationally were much higher, and the resources that could be brought to bear were considerable. Two years before, Vermont’s Democratic senator Patrick Leahy had spent $2 million on his reelection campaign. That number seems quaint by the standards of other states, but it was a huge number at the time in Vermont.
We saw it as a particular problem for our campaign, given that Bernie had not and would not in his Senate race take corporate PAC money. Given how relatively inexpensive campaigns in Vermont were at that time, we were very concerned that if the Republican candidate gained any traction, the national Republicans and their corporate allies would pour money into the state in the hopes of getting a cheap pickup. There were also several national Republicans who were bitter because Jim Jeffords had been elected as a Republican but left the party to sit as an independent as he became increasingly uncomfortable with its far-right move.
But on that first day and on the days that followed, our bigger concern was clearing the field on the Democratic side so that Bernie became the sole viable candidate to face the Republicans. This was complicated by the fact that Bernie would run as an independent, as he had in all his House races.
Over the course of his House career, he had become the de facto Democrat in his congressional races. That only made sense. He caucused with the House Democrats, he had seniority on that side of the aisle, and he voted for the Democratic House leadership. And, importantly, he had the overwhelming support of rank-and-file Democrats in Vermont. For those reasons, the national Democrats would never have helped a candidate seeking to unseat Bernie. Plus, as a practical matter, no serious Democratic politician in Vermont would have risked his or her political career by going after Bernie in a House race.
But this was different. Bernie did not have a relationship with the Senate Democratic leadership. He had no way of knowing if they would support a more establishment candidate, of which there were many. Bernie certainly did not fit the profile of the candidate the national Democrats all too often back—wealthy, self-funding, centrist. And even if they didn’t, it would be very easy for anyone to get on the ballot on the Democratic line, split the vote, and elect a Republican.
Senator Leahy helped with both of these problems. He intervened for Bernie with the Senate Democratic leadership to keep them from supporting a different candidate. Keeping the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) from backing someone else would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone else to raise the money needed to take on Bernie in a primary. The DSCC pretty quickly came in behind Bernie.
The second issue—keeping someone from getting on the Democratic line on the Vermont ballot—took more time. The goal was to have Bernie win the Democratic primary, decline the nomination, and then have the Democratic State Committee endorse him and not replace him on the Democratic line. In the meantime, we would gather the signatures for him to appear on the ballot as an independent. (Under Vermont law, you cannot appear on the ballot as both an independent and with any other affiliation.) In that way, Bernie would be an independent candidate for the Senate with the endorsement of the Vermont State Democratic Party and the DSCC. In other words, he would be the candidate of the Democrats, even if not the Democratic candidate.
The problem was that the state Democratic Party rules didn’t allow the state party to support candidates not running on the Democratic line. The rules had to be changed. Senator Leahy’s people got the ball rolling. Bernie called every member of the Vermont state committee.
In my time with him, this was the first time he had made this kind of effort to reach out in a systematic way to the Democratic Party infrastructure. It’s the understatement of the century to say that Bernie prefers meeting with everyday people a hundred times more than making these types of political calls. But he understood the importance of the fight he was taking on in his quest to be Vermont’s next U.S. senator. In the end, the rules were changed, and the likelihood that anyone would appear on the Democratic line evaporated.
Bernie’s Republican opponent in the 2006 race was Rich Tarrant, a self-made businessman who had recently sold his company for some $1.2 billion. That was a big problem. Tarrant would have, for all practical purposes, unlimited funds to try to win the U.S. Senate seat. And he was running to win. He brought in out-of-state Republican operatives to run his campaign. We feared this would not be the type of civilized race focused on issues that our small state was used to.
Bernie’s Senate campaign focused on his record of fighting for average Vermonters in the U.S. House and his ability to bring those fights to a larger platform in the U.S. Senate. He also ran hard against the Bush administration’s policies on war and peace and the economy. Bernie had served almost sixteen years in the House, so he had a long record for his opponent to distort. For the first time in his career, we did self-opposition research on Bernie’s voting record. This is common practice in politics—you want to know the potential lines of attack by your opponents and be ready for them. But we had never done it before. We brought on Paul Hortenstine to do research (both self and opposition) and to be the campaign press secretary. He was a thorough, aggressive, and effective campaign staffer. Just what the doctor ordered for what we would face in 2006.
Still, the issue of Rich Tarrant’s resources loomed large. We understood that our fund-raising would have to be kicked into high gear if we were going to compete. Bernie had the advantage of “incumbency.” As Vermont’s lone congressperson, he had been elected statewide every two years since 1990. Even so, his opponent had hundreds of millions at his disposal in a state where the most ever spent in a Senate race had been $2 million.
The foundation of Bernie’s fund-raising in 2006 was going to be small-dollar individual contributions, as it had always been. But we needed more of them. Even a decade ago, the internet was not the huge source of political contributions it is today. In those long-ago days, Bernie’s small-dollar fund-raising was through direct mail. Yes, the kind that comes through the post office. And just as he would be successful online in 2016, in 2006 he had great success with direct mail.
Bernie personally drafted all the direct-mail appeals. They usually took the form of a four-page, single-spaced letter heavy on policy prescriptions. They reflected who he was—as his policy-laden 2016 stump speech would—and how he liked to treat his small donors with respect, not gimmicks. He handpicked the target universe from commercially available lists. It was amazingly successful. Those who do direct-mail fund-raising expect to lose money on the front end, as they prospect from commercial lists to build a donor list that can then profitably be resolicited. Bernie’s appeals made money even in the prospecting phase.
In addition to direct mail, we would look to potential allies who could help fund the race. Labor, of course, strongly backed Bernie’s senatorial bid. The labor movement recognized his long and unequivocal support of working people during his House tenure. They were almost unanimously on board. But in these pre–Citizens United days, the amount of support each union could provide was limited.
We reached out successfully to the trial lawyers for help as well. Bernie had long opposed so-called tort reform, which is just another front in corporate America’s fight to escape any kind of accountability for their actions. Corporate interests flood the presidential and congressional electoral process to gain influence over politicians and the laws and regulations they produce. As a result, the one place average people can still get at least a fighting chance against corporate power and excess is in the courtroom. Needless to say, corporate interests are always doing whatever they can to shut down that venue as well.
Realizing the severity of our resource imbalance against Tarrant, Bernie did a few fund-raisers on the West Coast, in New York City, and a few other places. He has never been comfortable asking people for money, and he felt strongly that fund-raising robbed him of valuable time he could be using to talk to voters.
Rich Tarrant put his money to work early. In an unprecedented move, in May 2006 he began an ad campaign that was a weekly serial of his life story. Each week would present the next episode in the life of Rich Tarrant. The ads were very well done and were running often.
Our challenge was to turn Tarrant’s main advantage—his money—against him. We had to make every one of his innumerable ads a reminder to our fellow Vermonters that Tarrant was the candidate of big money and Bernie was the candidate of the average person. In many ways that was a perfect position to be in for an authentically progressive candidate like Bernie. Leahy’s chief Luke Albee’s view was that the race was summed up by the contrast between Bernie’s populism and Tarrant’s wealth. “C’mon,” he said to me, “his name is Rich.” Foreshadowing Trump’s talking points from 2016, Tarrant told NPR, “I will never apologize for success. But also, I’m not beholden to special interests.”
We went on the offensive right out of the gate. Soon satellite pictures of Tarrant’s Florida residence with its boat slip were in the news. As was the homestead exemption he took on the Florida house. And it was a good thing, too, because our fears about his campaign going negative turned out to be all too true. When you have unlimited money like Tarrant, you can afford to run the slick, warm ’n’ fuzzy weekly biography ad series as well as negative ads. And he did.
Tarrant went after Bernie’s opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing. The ads accused Bernie of coddling child molesters. NPR’s Peter Overby reported that Tarrant’s ads “accuse Sanders of quietly voting to protect child molesters” and portrayed him as being “against single working mothers.” In that same story, University of Vermont professor Gary Nelson described Tarrant’s ads as “the nastiest set of commercials Vermont has ever seen.”
One ad charged that Bernie was soft on terrorists because he opposed intelligence spending bills that he believed were bloated. Harkening back to 9/11, it used visuals of airliners. Senator Harry Reid told Bernie that Tarrant’s ads against him were the most vicious of the cycle. The gloves were off.
Tarrant’s company had applied for state tax breaks only available to companies that would certify they’d otherwise move jobs out of Vermont. Not a good fact for someone seeking to represent Vermonters in Washington. But in the paid media Bernie never went negative, as would be the case all the way through his presidential campaign. Instead he responded to Tarrant’s paid media assaults with a direct-to-camera ad that effectively made the case that all of Tarrant’s negative ads were a distortion of Bernie’s long record of service to his fellow Vermonters: “For months my opponent, Rich Tarrant, has been spending millions telling us about himself. Well, it’s his money and he can spend it if he wants. But he has no right to distort my record or what I stand for.” That ad was paired with another, featuring several Vermonters, including Republicans, who testified to the fact that Bernie is an honest public figure who fights for everyday people. These ads were done by Tad Devine.
One of the highlights of the campaign was a visit from Senator Barack Obama in March to endorse Bernie and Peter Welch. Peter Welch was running for the House seat Bernie was vacating to run for the U.S. Senate. Senator Obama was one of a number of elected officials who came that year to endorse Bernie. But you could see that there was something very different, very remarkable about this young senator. He had an ease about him, a comfort in himself and in his interactions with other people that is uncommon in politics.
Often when political figures come to campaign, their staff provides a list of things the person will and won’t do, what the schedule must look like, what food must be available, and so forth. It varies from person to person and is usually handled at the staff level. In an extreme case, one person who came to campaign for us limited the time that a town hall meeting could last and required any questions to be submitted ahead of time. Senator Obama had provided none of that, but we had had the usual conversations with his staff about what the format of the event would be so that he would know what to expect.
The event was held at a freestanding chapel at the University of Vermont. Picture a minichurch. As was the case all over the country, Senator Obama drew a huge crowd. Over 1,000 people were crowded inside and hundreds more were outside. People were literally hanging off the windows so they could see him. It was a giant turnout, and there was a fair amount of chaos. Per the schedule, the event inside would take place and then Senator Obama, Bernie, and Peter Welch would go outside to briefly greet the overflow crowd at the end.
As the overflow crowd continued to grow, Bernie decided that he and Peter Welch would go outside to begin addressing the people. When Senator Barack Obama arrived, I was to explain the situation and escort him to join them. That way, people who could not get in would not have to wait outside until the end of the event before being addressed. It was an unseasonably warm day in Vermont, but Bernie is always concerned about the physical comfort of his audience.
Bernie and Peter Welch headed out to the front steps of the chapel, while I stayed behind to inform Senator Obama that the run-of-show had changed. He arrived not long after, coming into the backstage area. “I’m sorry, Senator, but there’s been a change in the schedule,” I said apologetically. “Congressman Sanders is addressing the overflow crowd first and would like you to join him out there.”
He looked at me. I was expecting at least some consternation on his part. Most senators don’t like surprises, even little ones. Instead, he gave me one of those big, warm Barack Obama smiles. Maybe he could tell that I was nervous about the situation. “No problem,” he said. “This is your event and you just tell me where to go.” I led him through the chapel, which sent the crowd waiting in the pews into a frenzy, and out to the front steps. He rocked the speech to the overflow crowd and to the folks inside that he addressed afterward. It was no surprise to any of us when his presidential campaign caught fire in 2008. Both in his personal dealings and in his ability to inspire a crowd, we had already seen in 2006 that he was head and shoulders above.
Throughout his Senate run, Bernie was crisscrossing the state, holding meetings and rallies in town after town. We launched a mail program targeted to constituencies that are not reliably Democratic. I personally designed pieces that we sent to seniors, veterans, and rural voters. Bernie had championed these voters in the U.S. House, but it was important to remind folks. And we had a field program, spearheaded by Phil Fiermonte, whose members were knocking on doors, making phone calls, and tabling at events across the state. That combination of positive advertising, Bernie’s packed calendar, a vigorous field program, and “pointed” free media engagement created a wall that the Tarrant campaign, for all its money, couldn’t breach.
In August, Bernie asked for an updated finance report on the campaign. He hated doing traditional fund-raising in small gatherings. He looked at the direct-mail fund-raising totals and the cash on hand and said, “We’re going to be fine with the direct mail. I’m not doing any more traditional fund-raisers.” I can’t say that I was happy to hear Bernie say it, given the monetary resources we were up against. But it wasn’t a suggestion on his part.
The personal relationship between the candidates continued to degenerate and culminated in some extremely heated debates that can still be found on YouTube. Let’s just say there was no love lost between Bernie and Tarrant after Tarrant spent his campaign alleging Bernie loved child molesters and terrorists. (In fairness, I suppose Tarrant didn’t appreciate the narrative that he was a narcissistic carpetbagger who was using money and lies to buy a U.S. Senate seat.) Polling continued moving in Bernie’s direction. A couple of weeks before election day, Tarrant’s spending dried up. He knew he was whipped and he wasn’t going to pour more of his own money in.
Bernie beat Tarrant by over 20 points. Tarrant had spent over $8 million. Bernie had—surprisingly—spent over $6.5 million. In many ways, this was a foreshadowing of 2016. People would respond with overwhelming generosity, giving small sums to sustain Bernie’s fight for the common person against big-money interests. Two thousand six was also important because it gave us our first preview of what it is like to go up against the type of well-funded modern campaign we would face in 2016. All the same, the 2006 race was fought on much more favorable terrain in terms of Bernie’s name recognition and initial levels of support.
He certainly did not start the 2006 campaign at 36 percent in the polls as he did in 2016.
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Bernie’s transition to the Senate was much less unusual than his arrival in the House in 1990. There was no effort to exclude him from the Democratic caucus, no question that he would be treated as anything other than a full-fledged member of the Democratic Senate majority. That being said, the Senate and the House have extremely different cultures.
The primary difference is that every single senator has the power to say no, but no one senator has the power to say yes. By that I mean that any senator can hold up legislation by threatening a filibuster. But no senator or group of senators fewer than sixty can force debate to end on a measure and require a vote. By contrast, in the House, the leadership of the majority party has almost unlimited control of the floor.
The impact of everyone being able to say no in the Senate is a culture of interpersonal hypercourtesy. There’s a lot of walking on eggshells—making sure one doesn’t inadvertently give personal offense to another senator. Personal notes are sent back and forth between senators. As an example, very early on I remember walking with Bernie through one of the many subterranean tunnels beneath the Senate office buildings. We ran into Pete Domenici, a Republican, with whom Bernie exchanged hellos. Everything seemed fine. Bernie was in his usual hurry and not one to really chit-chat anyway.
Shortly thereafter, Bernie received a note from Senator Domenici, who profusely apologized for not having stopped to talk to Bernie at greater length. Neither Bernie nor I had noticed anything wrong with the exchange in the tunnel. But Bernie appreciated it as a sincere and courteous gesture. There was a lot to learn about the U.S. Senate.
What Bernie did realize was the opportunities that the Senate provided to make the lives of ordinary people better. In his first year, he turned his attention to a group of people who were suffering incredibly: the migrant tomato workers of Immokalee, Florida. He had learned of an organizing campaign to get the buyers of the tomatoes these workers picked—mainly fast-food restaurants—to pay a penny a pound more so wages could go up. YUM! Brands (which includes Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) had already agreed. But others, like Burger King, were holding out. In addition, the growers were opposed to the campaign and doing everything they could to prevent it from being successful.
Bernie traveled to Immokalee. On the day he arrived, authorities made arrests for human slavery there. Workers lived in terrible housing. Early in the predawn hours, they would gather to be chosen to go to the fields to pick tomatoes at extremely low wages. Clearly, many were being victimized by uncertain immigration status. At a community meeting, Bernie pledged to the workers that he would take their case to Washington.
When he got back to DC, he met with Senator Ted Kennedy, who was then head of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). Senator Kennedy agreed to hold a hearing—to be chaired by Bernie—to expose the plight of the migrant workers. Bernie had met with the tomato growers to try to convince them to soften their stance against the penny-a-pound program. They held firm.
I remember distinctly a staff-level meeting on the subject with representatives of interested Senate offices that sums up what all too often happens in DC. A staffer stated with sincere sadness that she had grown up in Florida, was aware of what was going on in Immokalee, felt that it was horrendous, but believed that it was “never going to change.” My internal response was: Bullshit. (I stress it was my internal response. It was the Senate, after all. Gotta be polite.) That was Bernie’s sentiment also.
Bernie made sure that workers from Immokalee were invited to testify at the hearing. They were the people suffering, and they should be there to tell their story in their own voice. There were workers who, for a variety of reasons, were reluctant to walk into a federal facility, let alone testify before a U.S. Senate committee. But Bernie assured everyone that they would be safe testifying before the Senate.
The hearing itself was one of the most meaningful I attended in almost a decade and a half working in the House and Senate. Usually congressional hearings consist of a panel of administration representatives who speak and are followed by a panel or two of experts or lobbyists for this or that interest. It is comparatively rare for average people to appear before a congressional committee. But in this case, you had some of the most vulnerable people in the country, from the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, who would make their case to a leading committee of the U.S. Senate. And it was all because of Bernie’s dogged determination to help people—in this case, people who were in so many ways far from Vermont.
It is difficult to convey the power of that hearing and what it symbolized. The voices of the marginalized being heard and, importantly, listened to in the halls of power. That is what Bernie Sanders brought and brings to governing—giving voice to the voiceless. It’s not quantifiable. But it is as real as, if not more real than, bills or amendments passed. It’s something the mainstream media will never get and that the Clinton campaign couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. But millions across the country would understand it in 2016.
In the end the Immokalee workers won their fight for Penny-A-Pound, against the opposition of the growers. In the years since, the collective wages of Immokalee workers have risen by millions of dollars.
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After a tremendous amount of deliberation, I left Bernie’s office in mid-2009 to take a break from politics and the Hill. After commuting to Vermont for six months and then two years as his Senate chief of staff, I needed a break. As my time came to an end, Bernie called me into his office and asked me to stay longer. It was difficult to say no but I did.