Outsider in the White House (5 page)

On the basis of this showing, Richard reasoned that if all of our energy were concentrated on my hometown, we might win the upcoming mayoral election. For days and nights, friends and I argued about the wisdom of running and, if I did run, what kind of strategy made sense. Finally, convinced that for the first time I might have a real chance not only to educate the public but actually win an election, I decided to run as an Independent. I collected signatures on nominating petitions, submitted them to the city clerk, and the campaign was on its way.

And what a campaign it was! Talk about coalitions. By the time Election Day rolled around, we had brought together leaders of the low-income community, college professors, the Burlington Patrolmen's Association, environmentalists, and conservative homeowners worried about rising property taxes.

This was not to be an “educational” campaign. The goal of this contest was to win. For this reason, the campaign was issue-oriented, focused on the most serious problems facing Vermont's largest city, problems ignored by city government. While I often placed these issues within the context of what was going on nationally, and made it clear that a fundamental change of priorities was needed at the national level, virtually all of my energy was spent addressing the concerns that faced the people of Burlington. I was running for mayor, not U.S. senator. The people of the city wanted to know how I would improve the quality of life at the local level if I became mayor. Those were the issues I addressed.

Our electoral strategy was straightforward, aimed at creating a broad-based, grassroots constituency. Starting with the low-income and working-class wards, I knocked on as many doors as possible. As I walked through the neighborhoods, I told people that I would do my best to represent those in the city who had long been locked out of City Hall. I listened to their concerns and supported their grievances. For instance, public housing tenants told me how unhappy they were with the ineffective leadership of the Burlington Housing Authority. They had almost no voice in decision making, maintenance was poor, and there were virtually no recreational activities for their children. In Lakeside, a working-class neighborhood in the south end, I walked a picket line with residents who had, for years, been asking the administration to repair an underpass that, in rainy weather, became impassable and left the entire neighborhood dangerously isolated from the rest of the city.

As I sat in kitchens and talked on front stoops in low-income neighborhoods, I heard the bitterness in their voices. They were well aware of the inequitable provision of municipal services. They knew that street and sidewalk paving, police protection, park maintenance, and snow clearing were less available to them than to upper-income neighborhoods. So I made alliances with neighborhood organizations in the low-income and working-class areas who believed, rightly, that their communities were not getting a fair shake from city government.

I tried to speak for those who had never had a voice in City Hall. Landlords in Burlington had all the power in tenant/landlord relations, so I pledged to the city's tenants that, for the first time, they would have a strong ally in the mayor's office. I championed the rights of tenants and came out in support of their fight for rent-control legislation.

One of my most widely noticed positions was strong opposition to a huge increase in the property tax proposed by Mayor Paquette. He calculated that with only token resistance (mine), he could slip the tax hike by without suffering any negative political effects. I kept stressing my opposition not only to this particular tax increase but also to the very concept of the property tax. Property taxes are highly regressive and hurt, in particular, low- and moderate-income citizens, especially senior citizens. During the campaign, I proposed that Burlington break its dependence on the property tax and develop a fair and progressive tax system to fund municipal services and local education. Day after day, door after door, I was pleasantly surprised by the kind of support I encountered. Either people were not being honest with me or we were going to do a lot better than the pundits expected. It turned out that Burlingtonians
were
honest.

Our campaign had a great deal of energy, but little sophistication. My campaign manager, Linda Niedweskie, an aspiring nutritionist who had recently graduated from college, had never before been involved in politics. Linda provided us with a strong sense of organization and kept everyone focused. Two low-income advocates, Dick Sartelle and John Bartlett, did a great job, and a number of former Liberty Union members, including John Franco and Terry Bouricious, also played active roles. David Clavelle, who had worked for a while for Senator Leahy, taught us how to make voter ID telephone calls. What a remarkable idea! Using the telephone for a campaign. None of us had thought of that. Together with a lot of volunteers who were energized by the remote but real possibility that we could win and develop a radically new politics for the city, we worked to canvass every home and apartment in Burlington.

The campaign itself functioned as a crash course in Burlington's problems and politics. In truth, I knew very little about Burlington city government. I had attended two Board of Aldermen meetings in my life—and had fallen asleep at one of them. They were boring. When the campaign began, I hadn't a clue where Ward 1 was, or the political difference between Wards 4 and 2. Not only did I have to become familiar with city problems and solutions, I had to learn to place those issues in a relevant context and devise viable solutions. In some ways, running for statewide office was easier than running for mayor because I was more familiar with the terrain of national and statewide politics.

Even though my campaign was geared toward lower-and middle-class people, a number of Burlington's upper-income citizens voted for me. One reason for this was that I attacked a plan to build high-rise condominiums on the city's waterfront. Burlington is a beautiful city, located on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, with stunning vistas of the lake and New York's Adirondack mountains. A real estate developer had proposed building luxury high-rise condominiums along the choicest sections of the waterfront. When I vigorously opposed that project, many citizens concerned about the environment and preserving the natural beauty of the city decided that my candidacy was worth serious consideration. By the end of the campaign a local artist, Frank Hewitt, had designed an effective poster that boldly proclaimed, “Burlington is not for sale.”

I spoke out against the planned expansion of the local hospital, primarily because it would burden the community with increased health care costs. But I also knew from going door to door that neighborhood residents were angry that the unnecessarily large expansion would replace a popular sledding hill with a large decked parking lot. So I stood up for local families who wanted children and past custom to count for more than cars and cement.

Again and again, in varying ways, our campaign reminded the people of Burlington that the incumbent mayor and his local Democratic machine were in cahoots with the downtown business community and irresponsible “pro-growth” forces, and out of touch with the concerns of the average citizen. My basic campaign message was that if I were elected mayor, I would open City Hall to
all
the people. I would run the city by responding to the best interests of working people, low-income people, and the middle class—the very folks who had largely been frozen out of the decision-making process.

But as it turned out, of all the issues I raised, the one that gave the greatest impetus to my candidacy was my support for municipal workers who were frustrated that the incumbent mayor and treasurer had refused, year after year, to negotiate in good faith with their unions.

The problem with a third-party or independent candidacy, as I had learned back in my Liberty Union days, was that although people will often agree with the candidate's position, they are skeptical of his or her “electability.” So it was of major importance that, shortly before the election, the Burlington Patrolmen's Association endorsed my bid for mayor. They did so because I promised to listen to the concerns of cops on the beat and open serious labor negotiations with their union. In supporting my candidacy the police union and its leader, Joe Crepeau, showed enormous courage. If I lost (which most people expected) they would be even deeper in the city doghouse with the incumbent mayor.

Needless to say, their endorsement became a monumental campaign event and a major news story: a leftist populist, a former opponent of the war in Vietnam, had gained the support of the blue-collar forces of law and order! The coalition we had brought together—low-income people, hard-pressed working-class homeowners, environmentalists, renters, trade unionists, college students, professors, and now the police—reinforced each other in the belief that together we could win the election.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it was that we developed a “coalition politics.” The way to rekindle hope in America, we learned in our small New England city, is to bring people together. After all, most people share things in common with their neighbors. They work hard to make a living, they are concerned about their children, they want to drink clean water and to feel safe in their homes. Reminding ordinary people that government can and should work for them, speak with their voice, is the great strength of coalition politics, and the hope, I believe, for America's future.

Being a congressman is tougher than you think. And it's even tougher than that when you're a serious legislator, trying to accomplish things in Washington while, at the same time, you're running for reelection in a difficult campaign. And it's even tougher than
that
when you're an Independent, taking on half the world in D.C. and the other half of the world back home. (Then again, some of my friends say I have a tendency to exaggerate.)

I come home to Vermont every weekend. That's where I live. I'm always surprised when people assume that I live in Washington. No way. I
work
in Washington. I
live
in Vermont. During the six years that I've been in Congress, I've spent two weekends in D.C. I come home to Vermont for several reasons. That's where my family and friends are. Vermont is where I want to spend my time. I couldn't be a good congressman if I weren't in constant touch with my friends, neighbors, and constituents. It's not just the many town meetings and conferences I hold or the schools and meetings that I attend. It's the walk downtown. It's the ride in the country. It's getting a sense of the weather. It's seeing the local papers rather than reading faxes. It's watching the local TV. It's getting a
feeling
of what's going on, and what people are thinking about.

I know members, especially some who have been in Congress for a while, who believe that they
live
in D.C. They go back to their districts now and then. But their hearts are in Washington. That's dangerous. When that happens you run the very real danger of forgetting where you come from, and what you're supposed to be doing.

There are great differences between being a mayor and a congressman. A mayor is a big fish in a little pond. A congressman is one body out of 535 (not to mention the president). But the main difference to me is physical proximity. When you're a mayor, you're
always
home and on the job. In fact, the problem is you can't get away for a minute. The phone rings at your house at 4 a.m. because the snowplows have blocked somebody's driveway and she can't get to work. A neighbor collars you in the produce section of the grocery store to report his annoyance with a zoning ordinance. You're running around the city checking out the condition of the streets when it snows. You're talking to kids at the Teen Center. It's very different from being in Congress. In Congress, you may be working on a multibillion dollar issue that affects millions of people, but nobody back home knows what you're doing. And you don't even know what the weather is like.

In the middle of a campaign it seems that everything comes to the fore. All your neuroses, all your fears, all your weaknesses. You're
on
all the time, and you're often tired, stressed out, prone to make mistakes. And a mistake in a campaign can be very costly. And I am tired. The past two years have been very tough. It's one thing to criticize intellectually the policies of Gingrich and the right wing. It's another thing to be locked in the day-to-day struggle, to be in a committee meeting or on the floor of the House, and to see and feel the ugliness and irrationality of much of what goes on. It is depressing and debilitating. But now I'm beginning a campaign. It's time to go forward.

I remember when I began my reelection effort for mayor in 1983. I was absorbed in city issues and neglected the upcoming campaign. The first debate was held one afternoon in a radio station. I stayed too late at City Hall and came flying into the station just in time. I was unprepared for the event and did poorly. Getting beaten in that debate immediately jolted me into the real world of politics, and into understanding the significant difference between being an officeholder and a candidate. It was a lasting discovery. No matter how hard I work, no matter what I accomplish, somebody else will always want my job. That's democracy. Okay. Time to figure out how I get reelected. Don't worry about the last two years. Don't worry about being tired. Start moving forward in this campaign. Focus. Focus. Focus.

Phil Fiermonte, a former AFT union organizer and the head of my congressional outreach effort, keeps reminding me that we should begin to organize the campaign. “It's getting a little late, Bernie,” he says. “We need money. We need a staff. Gotta get moving. It's going to take some time to get a good campaign manager.” “Hey, Phil. You want to be campaign manager?” “No. Definitely not. I don't like campaigns. I'll help out, but I want to stay in the congressional office.”