—Mayor Bernie Sanders, 1985
In an article in Politico, Michael Kruse and Manu Raju trace Sanders' evolving relationship with the Democratic Party.
The most surprising thing about the independent Vermont senator’s surprisingly successful campaign so far is not that he’s doing it as a self-described democratic socialist. It’s that he’s seeking the nomination of a party he caucuses with in the Senate but is not a part of ... a party he’s spent his 40-year career beating at the polls and battering in the press.
Some excerpts:
“He basically expropriated their base of voters,” said Fred Bailey, a Republican city councilman during Sanders’ time as mayor. “They couldn’t out-Bernie Bernie.”
The ’90 race was the beginning of the rest of Sanders’ political life. Smith, the Republican, seeing Sanders’ support swell, got desperate and used debates and ads to hit him for his socialist philosophies and also for his anti-Democratic Party rants ... It backfired. People in Vermont recoiled at Smith’s tactics, and Sanders won in a landslide. And Sandoval, the Democrat? She didn’t get 5 percent—she got 3.
It was official. In Vermont, in Sanders’ races, the second major party was … Bernie.
Today, looking back, colleagues in interviews with Politico recalled questions from party elders about whether to allow Sanders to sit on committees ... While Sanders formally was part of the House Democratic Caucus, said Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who served with Sanders in the House, “he was not really a member of the caucus.”
“The Senate,” one of his Democratic friends told Politico, “was the first time he’s ever been part of a Democratic family.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by New York’s Chuck Schumer, quickly got behind Sanders when he ran, and Nevada’s Harry Reid happily welcomed him to the Senate Democratic Caucus once he won. In December of that year, a month after his election, Ted Kennedy invited Sanders and the rest of the Democrats on the Senate’s Health, Education and Labor and Pensions Committee to an intimate dinner at his Washington home. Also in attendance? Barack Obama. And Hillary Clinton.
This embrace of Sanders was about politics, too: Democrats wanted to increase their numbers, and they needed Sanders to caucus with them to help win back the Senate majority. The move paid off for both sides.
I realize this article will be red meat for people who believe Sanders has no right to run as a Democrat, but I also think it's an interesting article.