Battery Park, summer 1973. A shaggy-haired, blue-jeaned guy stood behind a table selling t-shirts to raise money for his third party, the Liberty Union. I was pretty shaggy myself back then. I bought a t-shirt from Bernie Sanders, whose early runs for state office seemed as quixotic as ... well ... Don Quixote.
And here he is, 33 years later: The first self-described "democratic socialist" elected to the U.S. Senate; the first senator to have served all his time in Congress as an independent; the first man not born in Vermont to be sent to the Senate since 1875 (according to some quick research by my compatriot Matt Crawford) .
What a long, fabulous trip it's been: the 10-vote victory to capture the Burlington mayoralty. The loss of a U.S. House seat in 1988 to Peter Smith. His defeat of Smith two years later. The transformation of Sanders, the Brooklyn-born fringe candidate in the People's Republic of Burlington into Bernie, the populist local hero capable of winning votes deep in the Northeast Kingdom where Democrats fear to tred.
It's still hard for me to picture Bernie in the hushed U.S. Senate chamber, trading "good mornings" with the likes of Trent Lott and Dick Cheney (and given the things Cheney has said to Sen. Patrick Leahy, maybe it's best for Vt. senators to avoid the veep).
A few years ago my family and I were visiting the Museum of Natural History in New York, when a woman spotted my Vermont t-shirt, rushed over and practically hugged me. "I'm from Michigan and I LOVE Vermont because you have Bernie Sanders," she said. When I said I knew Bernie, she looked at me like I'd said I regularly met with the queen. She's cheering tonight, I bet, while other Americans are shaking their heads at the wacky choices they think Vermont makes.
I'll say this: Can't wait to tune into C-Span in 2007.
-- Candace Page
