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NY Times, Sept. 21, 2019
When he led Burlington, Vt., as a socialist, the Democratic presidential
contender worked with Republicans and business
By Eliza Collins
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Bernie Sanders says that if he is elected president,
he will convince skeptics to support his agenda by building a movement
so powerful that they will have no choice but to join him.
It is the same thing he says happened when he was mayor here in the
1980s, his only experience as a chief executive to date. "Democrats,
Republicans were not stupid," Mr. Sanders said in an interview in his
campaign office. "And they looked around and they said, 'Oh my God, we
thought this guy was a fluke, he'd come and he'd go, [instead he] is
further transforming politics in this city.' . . . So they started
working with us in a much more constructive way."
Mr. Sanders says his opponents came to their senses and joined him. But
a close examination of the Vermont lawmaker's record as mayor shows that
at times he also went to them, working with Republicans, police and
business on key issues facing the community -- sometimes to the
frustration of his liberal allies.
"The city was run in the 1980s as a coalition between what you would now
call the progressives and the Republicans," said John Franco, assistant
city attorney in the Sanders administration. "Bernie is a fiscal
conservative. The saying in Vermont is he's tighter than the bark on a
tree."
The Wall Street Journal interviewed more than a dozen people who lived
and worked in Burlington from 1981 to 1989, including Mr. Sanders and
his wife, Jane Sanders, at the time the director of the Youth Office.
What emerges is a picture of an executive who had the same goals for
governance as he does today, but won favor with Republicans when his
administration audited the city's finances, joined with the business
community on a controversial development project, and once sided with
the police and factory workers over protesters.
"He'll listen to the points of the other person. And as long as the goal
is not just to, you know, feather the nests of the wealthy," he will
work with people, Mrs. Sanders said.
It is a period that the senator doesn't often discuss on the campaign
trail. His deal-making past could help him reach out to centrist voters
but could also alienate supporters who are looking for an uncompromising
candidate to upend the system.
Louie Manno, a radio host here in the 1980s, said Mr. Sanders did a
"pretty good job" as mayor because his governing was less radical than
his campaigns.
Mr. Manno is a supporter of President Trump, but he said he isn't
worried about a Sanders presidency upending the country: "If he became
the president of the United States, we'd still be a free-market economy,
we would still have an army, we'd still have a Second Amendment."
Shortly after Mr. Sanders, an independent who identified as a Democratic
socialist, was first elected mayor, by just 10 votes, Mr. Franco and
Sandy Baird, a progressive activist and lawyer who later became a state
representative, were standing in the city's courthouse. Ms. Baird
remembers Mr. Franco turning to her and proclaiming: "Welcome to the
revolution."
But in his first term in office, one key initiative of Mr. Sanders's
administration was more quotidian: Cleaning up the city's finances, a
move that earned trust from some Republicans. Mr. Franco said they
wanted to prove to skeptics they knew how to govern.
The Sanders administration audited the city's finances and found a
surplus of nearly $2 million, which it invested into capital improvements.
Mr. Sanders also formed some alliances with the business community over
the Burlington waterfront, which local developers wanted to revamp. Mr.
Sanders said during his campaign that the city wasn't for sale. But once
in office, he decided to back a commercial development plan.
After that idea fell apart amid progressive resistance, the Sanders
administration pivoted to a development vision focused on public access,
the basis for the current waterfront, which includes a bike path and dog
park.
Mr. Sanders considers the waterfront a significant piece of his legacy
and held his 2016 presidential kickoff rally in a spot framed by Lake
Champlain and the mountains.
Peter Clavelle, who succeeded Mr. Sanders as mayor and oversaw the final
stages of waterfront development, said Mr. Sanders's involvement with
the business community helped make it happen.
"Bernie was not just the rabble rouser," said Mr. Clavelle, who was the
first director of the Community and Economic Development Office under
Mr. Sanders.
David Thelander, a GOP-aligned independent on Burlington's Board of
Aldermen at the time, said he found Mr. Sanders receptive to economic
development proposals.
But some progressives never got over Mr. Sanders's support for a more
commercial waterfront.
"One of the things that really bugs me about him is that he always
claims he never changes his position, that he is consistent in
everything that he does. This is one of the really big inconsistencies
about Bernie," said Rick Sharp, who runs Burlington Segway tours and
opposed commercial development of the waterfront.
Mr. Sanders again found himself on opposite sides of progressive
activists in June 1983, when hundreds of antiwar activists protested
General Electric Co. for making military weapons at a plant here. Greg
Guma, a progressive journalist who was involved in the antiwar movement,
remembers telling Mr. Sanders of the protest plans.
"He was very upset with us," said Mr. Guma, who wrote a book about Mr.
Sanders's tenure as mayor. Mr. Sanders told the group to demonstrate at
congressional offices instead, Mr. Guma said.
Mr. Sanders followed up with a call to tell Mr. Guma that if he
protested at the plant, he would be arrested. Mr. Guma went anyway.
Eighty-eight people were arrested, including Mr. Guma, who went back to
the protest after getting out of jail and was arrested again. Mr.
Sanders observed the arrests and didn't intervene, Mr. Guma said.
"My view was you had hundreds and hundreds of jobs that were
decent-paying union jobs. You shut them down here, they're just going to
move someplace else," Mr. Sanders told The Wall Street Journal.
Some of those same protesters who stood outside the General Electric
plant more than three decades ago now stand outside Mr. Sanders's Senate
office on Church Street to protest his support for basing F-35 fighter
jets at the Burlington Airport. As with GE, Mr. Sanders says he supports
the F-35 program because of the local jobs involved.
While Mr. Sanders did occasionally make surprising alliances, he still
had plenty of critics -- especially establishment Democrats.
Despite working with Republicans on occasion, he had a GOP opponent
every election cycle.
Ernie Pomerleau, a Republican developer, said he worked with the Sanders
administration at times. But he always tried to sink Mr. Sanders when
election time came around. Mr. Pomerleau said that one campaign cycle,
he informed Mr. Sanders that his friends had been encouraging him to be
Mr. Sanders's campaign manager.
"Why?" asked Mr. Sanders.
"Everybody I have supported has lost," Mr. Pomerleau replied.
Mr. Sanders laughed.
---
Elisa Cho contributed to this article.
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