For the first few decades of his political life, Bernie Sanders didn’t get to New York much. But in September 1983, he attended the Socialist Party USA conference, speaking about his improbable first victory running for mayor of Burlington, VT; his advocacy for the working class; and his distaste for the two-party system, bankers, the media and “the establishment.”
WNYC’s Archivist, Andy Lanset, recorded the speech, excerpted below.
On his first, improbable victory, running for Mayor of Burlington, VT, as a Socialist:
I’ll take you back to March 1 of this last year when the city of Burlington had its election for mayor, which is a two-year term, and I had been elected two years previous to that defeating a 10-year incumbent who had won five elections in a city which was a strongly Democratic party city, stronghold of Democratic party state-wide. They controlled 10 out of 13 seats on the board of aldermen and had the mayor’s seat for many, many years....
When the election results came in, it was a three-way race….When the results came in, to our amazement, I got 52 percent of the vote, the Democrat got 30, the Republican got 18….
As everybody in the city of Burlington knew, I am a Socialist and we make no apologies about it, and the people dealt with that issue, they dealt with some ugly full-page ads suggesting, Does Burlington need a foreign policy? among other things, they dealt with the Red-baiting they dealt with the lies and viciousness of at least the Republican candidate.
And the people said, “No we’re not afraid.” It doesn’t mean to say that 52 percent of the electorate in Burlington, VT, are Socialist. They’re not. The word “socialism” is a very big word. But at least what 52 percent of the people said is, “Hey, Sanders and the people he’s working with are doing a pretty good job. If this is socialism, we’d like a couple more years of it.”
On running an efficient government:
The majority of of the people in the city of Burlington are not Socialist. What they are is intelligent, sensible people. There are many conservative people, good Republicans who voted for us and you know why, because we are now running — as any city government should run — an honest, efficient government.
Now we make certain value judgments which people disagree with. One of our value judgments is that we are going to pay the workers of the city of Burlington a decent wage. And I remember once in a hysterical meeting, we announced that we were giving, when inflation was — I forgot what is was — but we announced a 9 percent increase to our city workers and the Republicans on the board were going nuts. I mean they just, this was much too much. Because they’re embarrassed, because their corporations were only offering 5 or 6 or something like that. These are value judgments, which many people don’t like.
But what people do like is running efficient government. We’ve introduced centralized purchasing. Low and behold, when I was first elected, we had a meeting of all the department heads and we said to them, "Okay, how much are you paying for gasoline for your vehicles?" We have the police, the fire, the streets. One guy says, "Buck ten a gallon, buck fifteen a gallon," and then the fire chief says very sheepishly says, "dollar thirty a gallon." They were going out on their own, they were not using anything. Since that time, our system treasurer has gotten six towns together and we’re now getting gas at the very cheapest price.
On his distaste for the two-party system:
And the second thing that is gratifying, is not only winning reelection as a Socialist, but also taking on the two-party system and beating the hell out of it. As somebody who has been involved in third-party politics for a number of years in Vermont, one of the problems is when you go out campaigning, people come up to you and say, “You’re absolutely right…but I can’t vote for you because you can’t win, so I have to vote for the lesser of two evils, because that’s the only realistic thing I can do.”
Having run on four occasions for statewide office and having had to deal with that on many occasions, it is very gratifying to inform you that in Burlington, VT, we have a very active minority third party and that active minority third party is the Democratic party. And it is with supreme joy we tell people, "We know the Democrats have something to say, but they can’t win, don’t waste your vote!"
On bringing new people into the political system:
What’s happening in Burlington, which also I do want to emphasize, we have a student population, the University of Vermont is there, and a middle-class population, but make no mistake about it, we were not elected by students, we were elected primarily in working-class and low-income wards and I am very proud of that.
What I want to say also which is extremely gratifying, in the sense that if we accomplish nothing ever again, we have accomplished something which seems to be tremendous. As everybody in this room knows, many Americans, working people, low-income people, minorities, have given up on the electoral system, on government. They very correctly say, “Why should I waste five minutes to vote when I have better things to do with that time? It doesn’t matter who wins, it’s not going to affect me.” And they’re right…
It turns out the system, which was so invincible that people said, "Hey, you got the strongest machine in the state of Vermont, you can’t play with these guys," they were a paper tiger and they fell apart very, very quickly when a few people and more people got on board and fought them…
On socialism:
I think one of the problems that all of us have is that we know what we believe, but when you say the word "socialism" out there in the outside world, people think of the Soviet Union, of what goes on, CBS television’s interpretation of what socialism is, what the school system's interpretation of what socialism is. And it takes a while.
People who do not know what the word means and what the socialist vision is about, they are not going to accept it when you make a speech all of a sudden. It has to be said over and over again, until people say, "Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I know this person, he was active in the peace movement, or this woman was active in the women’s movement, or this person was active in the union movement."
And after a while the things you begin to say make more sense…
On his first successful campaign:
And in the beginning, very frankly, if you allow me a criticism of the left, sometimes people become too defeatist. We look at the past and say, it can’t be done, we’re gonna lose. To our credit we went in there with a reasonable belief that we had a shot to win. We went in with that honest belief based on some past history and an understanding of the city.
And what ended up happening, we started out talking about issues that had been brushed under for years and it turned out, lo and behold, that this machine, that invincible machine, was extremely vulnerable, that there was incredible bitterness that what was happening in the city, that is not uncommon in small cities, that in ward after ward after ward, candidates were running unopposed.
What they had neatly done is divided the city, the Democrats had controlled it, now and then they would have a caucus, although most of the time not, candidates would run unopposed here. The Republicans had the wealthy ward up there, they ran unopposed and city government went on and on.
It turned out, though, that people were a little more bitter and a little bit more angry and a little more wanting of change than the establishment had believed.
On a national and international vision:
Obviously, as a Socialist, we have to do more than run an honest, efficient, effective government where we say openly what our priorities are...Our goal is to have a vision about the international situation, and the national situation, to point out what's wrong and hopefully what's right. We feel it’s right and necessary to speak out on those issues.
We had the representative of the Nicaraguan government — very lovely guy — come to Burlington to speak under our auspices. And again, people don’t like to hear that. Some people don’t like to hear it. But it is imperative that we speak about defending the Nicaraguan revolution.
On “Republicrats”:
The disgust with the two-party system is greater than we are led to believe. We all know that it is the function of the media and the system to tell us how lucky we are to live in a democracy where we can vote for Ronald Reagan or John Glenn! How lucky we are! Thank god that we have this great two party system. Most people, in fact, despite what they learned in school and from the League of Women Voters and on television, don’t believe it, they really don’t. And there is there is much more contempt and understanding there is a one-party system, what we call the “Republicrats” in Brooklyn, in, um, Vermont, and they are willing to take the system on if given a reasonable chance, if given a reasonable alternative.