IF THERE’S ONE THING EVERYONE knows about Bernie Sanders it’s that, other than his devotion to his family, he is singularly focused on his work. When you are working with him, he is in very frequent contact with you. But when you are not, you are not likely to hear from him very often. The amount of time and focus he devotes to his lifelong efforts to move the country in a progressive direction just doesn’t allow for it. I had seen him each year at his annual holiday party, but not much other than that. When I got a call from him in the early spring of 2015 it came as a bit of a surprise.
I was sitting at my kitchen table. “Hi, this is Bernie Sanders,” he said. It sounded strangely formal, because I would have known who it was if he had just said “Bernie.” (The accent is a dead giveaway.) He invited me to dinner with no other explanation. Of course, I accepted. I knew him well enough that it wouldn’t just be a dinner to catch up.
We met at the Thunder Grill in Union Station. I have spent so much time with Bernie that no matter how long it has been since we’ve talked, it always seems like we pick up just where we left off. I’m sure we talked about Honk-A-Mania and a bunch of old war stories, like the time he was trying to talk to an AP reporter from the phone in my father’s pet store while a cockatoo screamed in the background. Or the time we were running late for a radio talk show and the host kept announcing over the radio that he had no idea where Bernie Sanders could be. We were on a rural road racing to the studio and desperately hoping to find a pay phone on the way to explain that we’d be late. That one is always good for a laugh.
He asked about my comic book store. After I left his office in 2009 I had opened the store and actively traveled the comic convention circuit. We talked about that for a while and how great it was going. Then we talked about my boys’ Little League teams. When he was the mayor of Burlington, he had helped start a Little League program in the working-class area of the city. The conversation then moved to some Senate shop talk. We were there for quite a while, and, as with any dinner with a friend, the conversation naturally wound its way down. We said good-bye and headed our separate ways.
Now I know that Bernie was getting closer to deciding to run for president. The political commentator and author Bill Press had hosted a few meetings at his house with Bernie and a number of folks just to talk through the possibility. The guests at these meetings had been invited just to be sounding boards, with the understanding that none were committing in any way to Bernie if he did run. One of the attendees, Brad Woodhouse, would later file a bogus Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against us as part of his work with a David Brock–affiliated organization. But Bernie and I never discussed any of it that night.
When I got home, my wife asked what Bernie had wanted to talk about. I said, “I have no idea.” Over the next couple of months, there started to be more media speculation about Bernie running for president. It became clear to me what our conversation at the Thunder Grill had been about.
Despite his public persona, Bernie is in many ways private and reserved. Born in Brooklyn, he has nonetheless internalized a Yankee ethos. One aspect of this ethos is self-reliance and nonimposition. He finds it hard to ask people for things that he perceives as personal rather than political. If someone is working with him in politics, he expects the same level of commitment that he puts in. But the personal is something else entirely.
When we met at the Thunder Grill, he was looking to gauge my happiness with my nonpolitical life. His takeaway, no doubt, was that I was content, which I was. Given that, he didn’t want to ask me to put that aside and join what would be an all-consuming, long-shot presidential campaign.
With all the press speculation about Bernie intensifying, I called Phil Fiermonte. I asked Phil if this rumored presidential bid was real. He told me that he didn’t know if it was or not. That, of course, was the truthful answer, because at that time even Bernie didn’t know for sure. I told Phil to let me know if that changed.
Bernie called me again at the end of April to meet for dinner. We met again at the Thunder Grill. As we sat down, I asked him, “Are we going to talk about whatever it was we were supposed to talk about the last time we had dinner?” He told me he had decided to run for president.
We discussed me joining the campaign. I said I would obviously have to talk with my family. I knew what a campaign like this meant in terms of time. I also said that I would only be interested in coming on if the campaign was one to win the nomination, as unlikely as winning was at that moment (CNN reported Bernie’s support was then at 3 percent). I asked Bernie, “Are you in this to win?”
I told him that if it was just an “educational” campaign, I would be happy to max out and write nice things about him on social media, but I could not upend my life unless we were going to run to win. “Yes, I’m running to win,” he assured me. Moreover, he would compete in every contest, regardless of how the campaign was going. “I’m going to run all the way to the end of the process,” he said. In hindsight, I’m not sure if he was totally convinced at that moment that it was a campaign to win, but that night he sold me.
He laid out his vision for the campaign. It would be a grassroots, volunteer-centered effort focused on the progressive agenda he had championed his whole life. He asked what I thought. “A grassroots campaign is great, but it’s not going to be enough to win,” I said. The campaign would have to use every weapon at its disposal, because his opponents would. “We will run a grassroots campaign, but we will also have to use all the modern tools of campaigning. We are going to have to do it all,” I said. “Yes, exactly,” he said. “We will do it all.”
But he lamented how much everything seemed to cost. He wanted someone he trusted to help coordinate that world. “Do you know what the standard Washington monthly consulting fee is?” he asked. “It’s 30,000. That’s what they all want. It seems to be the going rate inside the Beltway.” He did not want the campaign’s resources devoured by consulting fees, especially ones that bore no fruit. (Tad’s firm was working purely on the basis of ad commissions, so they charged no monthly retainer.)
We talked about my role in the campaign. After a while he got around to suggesting that I should be the manager. Both of us understood that while I had managed his first Senate race, this would be a completely different animal. Hillary Clinton had spent years preparing and had some of the top Democratic talent running her campaign. “Jeff, I would be crazy to offer you this position and you’d be crazy to take it,” he said. We agreed to meet the next day after I talked with my family.
When I got home, my wife asked if Bernie wanted me to work on the campaign. I said he did, and she immediately said she thought I should do it. My daughter and two boys were enthusiastic about it also. As my boys encouraged me to do it, I looked at them and told them, “You don’t know what you’re asking.” I knew that dinners home, doing homework together, coaching their Little League teams, and being there for them would be a thing of the past.
The next night Bernie and I met again. Turns out we were both crazy. We were off to the races in a campaign against a candidate who had the backing of the entire Democratic establishment. Their campaign had been years in the making. Ours was starting from scratch.
Putting together the campaign team was going to be a difficult enterprise, and we were way behind. In addition, the ground rules for the 2016 Democratic contest were already set. And a limited debate schedule would soon be imposed on us by the chair of the Democratic National Committee—a schedule worked out ahead of time by the Clinton campaign.
One thing I knew was all the things I didn’t know. I had to get as much help as I could from the experienced people around us. I met Mark Longabaugh, one of Tad’s partners, at the Mad Fox Brewing Company in my home town. Mark had a long history of involvement in politics, including working for Bill Bradley in New Hampshire (when Tad was working for Al Gore) and in the environmental movement. He had been hired to run Mario Cuomo’s New Hampshire operation in 1992 until Cuomo unexpectedly dropped out. Mario Cuomo had been a hero of mine, and I remembered being very upset when he decided not to run. Had Cuomo become president in 1992, the country and the Democratic Party would have been in a much different and, in my view, infinitely better place. Mark had even been a congressional candidate himself.
Mark became a key adviser to Bernie, and to me. Mark “gets” politics—both the big picture and the nuances. I relied on him in many cases daily. What is important to understand about him is that Mark was himself a candidate for the manager job. And he would have been a great one.
When Bernie hired me, Mark reached out to me immediately to offer to help me in any way possible. Many in politics would have been bitter; Mark and I both knew that in terms of experience and expertise at the time, he was head and shoulders above me. Not Mark. He understood my long-standing relationship with Bernie. He would often say that, given that history, no one else could have run the campaign. I’m not sure that’s true. But what is true is that Mark is one of the people without whom I could not have done it. Mark was and is a mentor and a friend—someone who fought by my side and always had my back.
* * *
It’s not quite fair to say there was nothing in place when I was brought on to manage the campaign. Bernie and Jane had already retained a few key players who would take on critical roles. Devine, Mulvey, and Longabaugh—DML—were already the media consultants. They had also brought on the digital firm Revolution Messaging. Rev, as we called them, oversaw our online fund-raising—which we all knew early on was going to have to be a substantial (or the substantial) source of funding for the campaign. Rev also handled online advertising, list management, and all related tasks. Their success made the entire campaign possible.
During an initial meeting with Revolution Messaging’s Tim Tagaris, Keegan Goudiss, and Scott Goodstein, Bernie asked how much could be raised online. Tim said, “If it’s a competitive primary, thirty million to fifty million.” Bernie, not wanting too rosy an estimate, asked, “What if it’s not a competitive primary? How about credible primary?” Tim replied, “Probably close to thirty million, then.” Tim’s $30 million estimate became the basis for all our early budgeting. And his $50 million number became our fantasy target.
In addition, there were Senate staff, like communications director Michael Briggs, digital director Kenneth Pennington, and social media director Hector Sigala, who were moving over to the campaign. A number of Bernie’s other Senate staffers helped in the off hours.
But we were woefully understaffed. One person described our situation as running a marathon while you are trying to put on your shoes. That was a pretty accurate description. We were going to have to build campaign infrastructure while we supported Bernie’s aggressive public calendar.
* * *
Bernie’s initial announcement for the presidency of the United States was perhaps the most understated of the 2016 campaign season and maybe in recent memory. There was no fanfare. No crowds, no big event. Bernie called a press conference on April 30, 2015, in the Senate Swamp—outdoors, on Capitol Hill, where senators often hold press events. Usually they are highlighting some bill or legislative initiative. It was a low-key event—ironic, given the explosion of grassroots support his candidacy would receive in the summer. One thing that did bode well for the future of the campaign is that online donations of $1.5 million poured in over the next twenty-four hours from 35,000 donors. That seemed like a huge amount of money at the time, but it was only a small preview of the generous support Bernie would receive over the next year. A hundred thousand people also signed up to join the campaign.
* * *
What became clear very early on was that, despite the fact that there was a sitting Democratic president, Hillary Clinton had assumed the mantle of the incumbent in this contest. And in political contests against an incumbent, the path to victory is a two-step process. The first is to convince the voters that they want to look beyond the incumbent. And once they do, you must convince them that you are the better choice, or many of those who have been pulled from the incumbent will drift back.
Hillary Clinton had considerable political strengths. She had an impeccable résumé. She was a seasoned candidate with the experience of running a near-successful primary campaign in 2008. She had the Democratic establishment (and many outside the establishment) in her corner. She would be a formidable fund-raiser. And she was universally known. Almost 18 million people had cast votes for her in 2008, when she ran against Senator Obama. As we were to discover in polling later, her “favorables” with self-identified Democratic voters were extremely high. Given that self-identified Democrats made up the majority of primary and caucus voters—and in closed primary states (that is, those that did not let independent voters participate) all the voters—this was a serious challenge.
On the other hand, she had a reputation for being aloof and not comfortable with unscripted human interaction. In addition, as later polling also revealed, many voters had serious concerns about her trustworthiness. This was particularly true of Democratically aligned independent voters—voters who call themselves independents but dependably vote Democratic and often participate in Democratic primaries where it’s allowed. She had played an active role in the first Clinton White House—a strength and a weakness. Hillary Clinton was an experienced leader at the highest levels of government. But that meant she also was an active participant in policy making and policy advocacy in the 1990s. Many of those policies—like NAFTA, harsh criminal justice policies, welfare reform, and the Defense of Marriage Act—were as much hers as they were Bill Clinton’s. And these were the very policies that Bernie Sanders had fought vigorously against during this time in Congress.
But before we could make these contrasts, we had to let the people of the country know who Bernie Sanders was and what he stood for. Even as late as November, our polling showed over 40 percent of voters in some places didn’t have enough information to form an opinion of him.
There was a strong consensus among Bernie, Jane, myself, and other top advisers that we were not going to run a negative, burn-everything-to-the-ground campaign. The media thought it was just a talking point, but it went to the essence of what Bernie was trying to do. He wanted to inspire the nation, not drag it into the mud. Bernie wanted to win, but not for personal reasons. He wanted to run in a way that uplifted the progressive policy vision that had been his life’s work. And, importantly, he wanted to run on concrete policies so that in the event he won the White House, however unlikely it seemed, he would have a mandate to advance those policies in Congress.
In broad terms, we had to introduce Bernie Sanders and that policy agenda to the nation. We had to show them he was a credible alternative to Hillary Clinton so they would give him a good look. And then we had to lay out the contrast between them in a way that was policy-focused and not personal or negative.
The goal, of course, is to acquire enough delegates to win the nomination, or to create such a tidal wave of support that all of one’s opponents drop out. The latter would be difficult to do, as Clinton had shown in 2008 that she would fight all the way to the end. Even so, given the expectation that she would dominate the primaries, a series of early wins could create the momentum Bernie would need to win the nomination. Our thinking began to focus on how to make that happen.
* * *
I met John Robinson at a café called The Coupe in DC late in May for a meeting. Mark Longabaugh had recruited him. When I arrived, John was already there, sipping some tea. I ordered a glass of wine. John had worked on John Edwards’s presidential campaign and had a wealth of other campaign experience. The idea was for him to come on for a few months and get the internal accounting, human resources, and financial processes in order. As part of that, he would train someone to take over those responsibilities for the long term.
He had already met with Bernie and Jane. They liked him. During the interview Bernie asked John, “Do the people on campaigns with you like you?” John replied, “They don’t, because I tell them they can’t spend all the money they want.” Bernie then asked me to meet John. We talked about the various aspects of the job, and John agreed to come on board for a three-month stint.
Job number one was to put together a budget—actually, two budgets. One would be based on Revolution Messaging’s $30 million estimate through the end of the first four contests—all of which occurred before March 2016. The second would be based on the $50 million fantasy number. As it turned out, John had the Edwards for President budget from 2004. Coincidently, it was for about $30 million. From my perspective, it was extremely helpful to see the relative allocation of funds to the various spending categories. Little did we know that we would ultimately raise over $230 million. That unknown—that the American people would generously donate nearly a quarter of a billion dollars—shaped the structure of the campaign early on more than any other single fact.
In our many meetings, DML estimated that paid media (television, radio, and digital) for the first four contests would be in the neighborhood of $18 million. In those early days of the campaign, that seemed like an incredibly high number. But I was determined that we not find ourselves in the final weeks of these contests with no money to spend. As Bernie and I had discussed at Thunder Grill, we could only win if we could deploy the tools of modern campaigning in conjunction with our grassroots efforts. The need to squirrel away $18 million would guide my hiring and spending practices throughout the summer. If we only raised $30 million, then the campaign would have to live on $12 million. That was not a lot to spend over nine months’ time.
Bernie, for his part, also wanted to keep staffing low and expenses down. He was less focused on the need to keep the $18 million in reserve for paid media in the first four states. He was focused on the long term. As he and I had discussed at the beginning of the campaign, he was committed to contesting every single primary and caucus. We also knew that if we faltered along the way, our fund-raising could very well dry up. So Bernie wanted a slow “burn rate” so there would be adequate resources to go all the way to the end. He was not confident we would even hit the $30 million number. He reminded me of his experience in 1986, when his campaign had gone through all the money early.
In addition, Bernie is a frugal manager by nature. He is always convinced that the work being done by any ten people could really be done by five. It’s an instinct that had served him well as mayor of Burlington—he could accomplish a lot while keeping trust with the taxpayers. He certainly favors an activist government, but he also wants an efficient one.
That view carried over to the campaign. He was determined to do as much as possible with the limited resources we expected to have and so was very cautious about creating a large campaign bureaucracy. We didn’t always see exactly eye to eye on how many people were needed for a given task, but it is fair to say that we did far more with far fewer people than most campaigns ever do. His pledge to go to the end was one that was taken seriously. Once we reached $10 million cash on hand in our bank account, we never fell below that amount until very late in the campaign. With a bare-bones staff, that amount would have kept him on the road through June 2016. So, between Bernie and me there was a real effort to keep staffing low and costs down during the summer of 2015—although we may have had somewhat different motives. If we had known how successful the fund-raising would be, we would have set up in more states earlier in the process, and we would have fleshed out our headquarters staff considerably.
The other major factor that would affect the early campaign was Bernie’s decision that at least through the end of 2015 he would continue in his role as a full-time U.S. senator. He felt an obligation to the people of Vermont, and he wanted to make sure he was representing their interests in Washington. Republican Marco Rubio had done the opposite, taking to the campaign trail and rarely attending to Senate business. Bernie’s position was a controversial one within the campaign, as it meant that he would only be available to campaign on weekends and whenever the Senate was out of session. That was a severe limitation, especially given the fact that we were relying on commercial air travel and not a charter at that point. It also meant that he would be working seven days a week either in the Senate or on the trail.
And he did intend to be on the trail. It is an understatement to say that Bernie is a strong believer in getting out and meeting voters. A central part of his vision of the campaign—maybe the central part, for him—was to hold meetings and rallies with people all over the country. That had been the key to much of his electoral success in Vermont. If he could just speak to voters directly, without the filter of the media, he was confident that the power of his ideas would win them over. He certainly recognizes the power of TV, radio, and the internet to reach voters, but in his heart he prefers to campaign the old-fashioned way—going from town to town talking to people face-to-face.
Bernie’s view of rallies is different from many politicians’. For most, it is really a media appearance, with the crowd as a prop. For Bernie, the rally itself and his connection with the people who are in the room with him are the most important. That’s one of the reasons he feels comfortable delivering his stump speech to crowds over and over again. The people he is speaking to that minute have not heard it before, even if the media has. Of course, he wants the media to cover the event, but his primary goal is to win over the people right in front of him. (None of us could even dream of the possibility that the media would broadcast his speeches from beginning to end the way they did for Donald Trump throughout the campaign.)
In addition to him speaking to voters, the rallies, if successful in terms of their size, would help validate the campaign in the eyes of skeptics. We didn’t know then that Bernie’s signature rallies would grow to the massive events that they did—and quickly.
With our tight budget and an even tighter schedule, we had three immediate administrative goals: to continue to assemble a small headquarters staff; to begin staffing the first four states to hold contests, with Iowa and New Hampshire being priorities; and to get Bernie on the road.
The other challenge we were facing—although we didn’t know the specifics at the time—was the extent to which the rules of the game under which we would compete were already being molded to benefit the Clinton campaign. On May 5, 2015, the Democratic National Committee announced that there would be only six sanctioned debates between the contenders for the nomination. (Contrast this with the twelve that the Republicans held.) They would begin in the fall. Dates, times, and sponsoring media organizations were left TBD. Importantly, any candidate appearing in a nonsanctioned debate would be barred from any of the sanctioned debates. This last provision was particularly onerous. If Bernie and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley had participated in a nonsanctioned debate, they would be barred from the sanctioned debates in which Hillary Clinton would appear. Without Bernie and O’Malley, the sanctioned debates would have been canceled or not covered by the media. That would have worked fine for the Clinton campaign. Bernie needed the exposure. Clinton did not. The DNC had thrown down the gauntlet. Agree to only debate the six times, or there would be no debates against Hillary Clinton.
In his story that same day, CNN’s Mark Preston quoted DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz as saying, “Our debate schedule will not only give Democratic voters multiple opportunities to size up the candidates for the nomination side-by-side, but will give all Americans a chance to see a unified Democratic vision of economic opportunity and progress—no matter whom our nominee may be.”
In an interview on May 31 with Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd, Bernie called for more debates—and earlier debates, to start as soon as July. He followed up with a letter to Wasserman Schultz on June 1 requesting more debates. He pointed out that it would be good for voters and good for the Democratic Party for there to be additional debates. He also called for the additional debates to be held at various locations around the country to increase interest in the election outside the early voting states. In late June, we announced that over 200,000 people had signed our petition calling for more debates. It fell on uncaring ears.
One might chalk this all up to the DNC chair just trying in her own way to help Hillary Clinton. But the 2016 leaks of Hillary for America (HFA) chairman John Podesta’s emails showed it was much more. In truth, the debate schedule and rules were hashed out behind closed doors between the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
An April 27, 2015, memo from top Clinton aide Charlie Baker revealed it all. The memo was emailed to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, communications director Jen Palmieri, and adviser Ron Klain. (Ron Klain had been Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff for the first two years of the Obama administration.)
Baker’s April 27 email detailed that, since February 2015, Mo Elleithee and Anita Dunn of the DNC had been in communication with the Clinton campaign about the debates. It suggested they might have been in contact with other campaigns, but I can certainly say that they had no contact with the Sanders campaign. Apparently, they did have discussions with the O’Malley campaign, but according to former staffers involved in those discussions, there was little interest in any real input from Team O’Malley. Lis Smith, O’Malley’s communications director, described the whole process as “kabuki theater.”
As for the substance of the Clinton position on debates, Baker wrote:
Through internal discussions, we concluded that it was in our interest to: 1) limit the number of debates (and the number in each state); 2) start the debates as late as possible; 3) keep debates out of the busy window between February 1 and February 27, 2016 (Iowa to South Carolina); 4) create a schedule that would allow the later debates to be cancelled if the race is for practical purposes over; 5) encourage an emphasis on local issues and local media participants in the debate formats; and 6) ensure a format that provides equal time for all candidates and does not give the moderator any discretion to focus on one candidate. Through discussion of these goals with the DNC their current plan is to begin a debate schedule that would commence in early October, with one debate a month, one each in the early primary and caucus states, and the remaining 2 post South Carolina (we will need to push them to post March 1 and then the later 2 debates would be cancelled if the race ends). The DNC’s current plan is to release the attached press release (which lacks this specificity but confirms the number and start window for the debates). The other campaigns have advocated (not surprisingly) for more debates and for the schedule to start significantly earlier. Mo and Anita believe that this announcement prior to the actual entry into the race of other candidates will strengthen their hand as they lock a schedule in with local media partners and state parties. One remaining issue is the criteria for participation: we believe it is important to the extent possible to keep the debates “multicandidate” and to eliminate the possibility of one on one debates; the most likely standard that would achieve this result is to allow any announced candidate who is: 1) a Democrat and, 2) who meets some threshold of viability (1 percent) in either a national or state specific (e.g. Iowa, NH) to participate.
On August 6, the DNC released further details of its debate schedule. Not surprisingly, they aligned perfectly with what Baker described as “in our interest.” The first four debates would be held on October 13 in Las Vegas, November 14 in Des Moines, December 19 in New Hampshire, and January 17, 2016, in Charleston. There would be no debates during the Clinton-proposed blackout period. The last two debates were to be held in Milwaukee and Miami, on dates to be announced (obviously so they could be canceled in accordance with the Clinton campaign’s position if the race was not competitive by then). The DNC issued this schedule right after Bernie’s announcement and before Martin O’Malley’s, no doubt “to strengthen their hand,” as the Baker memo notes.
For the record, the October CNN debate used the 1 percent threshold as the qualifier for debate participation. While the Clinton campaign wanted that low threshold to have as large a field as possible on the stage, Bernie himself supported it, because he felt it only fair that all the candidates get to make their case to the voters. During later negotiations, one of the networks was trying to exclude Martin O’Malley, because they wanted a head-to-head between Bernie and Hillary Clinton (something that would have been better for Bernie than a three-way debate). Bernie’s response to me was that even if O’Malley was not polling well at the moment, he was a serious candidate running a serious campaign. He told me, “Jeff, you tell them that if Martin O’Malley is excluded, I won’t be there either.”
Two of the first four debates were scheduled for Saturdays, when viewership would likely be lower. The Iowa debate would be the same night as the annual football game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Minnesota Golden Gophers—a rivalry that goes back over a century. The New Hampshire debate was on the last Saturday before Christmas—not likely to draw a large crowd unless it was playing on jumbotrons at shopping malls.
The rigging of the debate schedule would be just an early example of the DNC—and by that I mean Debbie Wasserman Schultz and those acting at her behest—putting a finger on the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton. Not until the release of John Podesta’s emails and former DNC chair Donna Brazile’s book did anyone realize the full extent of the active coordination between the DNC and HFA. The debate over debates would rage for months, with an interesting turnabout in fair play occurring during the New Hampshire primary, when the Clinton campaign saw itself tanking in the Granite State.