8/11/2019 Bernie on the Brink | Vanguard Press | Nov. 3,
1988
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"".'*-.....s.don ... ,.... lo I I th
BERNIE his off-the-cuff comment
~ continued from page 1 about wanting to abolishThose financial
woes in federal subsidies for dairy
tum exacerbated political ten- farmers.
sions, with the Sanders-for- Nelson
notes.too.thatGovernororganization falling Democrats who survive
a
apart halfway through the closely fought primary almost
race. A U 1 0of it s paid ne ver win the s ubsequ ent
worken were laidoff in statewide election in Ver-August, and its
central office mont. The UVM pundit fur-
in Montpelier was shut down. ther argues that Poirier isElection
day 1986o nly mad e "just too new a commodity-the inevitahle
official- penple who don't know much
Sanden picked up a hit less about himhaven't been con-than 15
percent of the vote, vinced 10 vote for him."trail ing Smith and
the vie- But the advantages pro-
rorious Madeleine Kunin by vided by his
opponents'severallenglhs. failings do not, by themselves,
Even ifSmith does hang account for Sanders ' impres-
on 1 0 his lead after allthe bat- sive poll ratings. In
orderlots are counted next Tues- tomake the most of theseday, it
seems prohable that openings, he still needed to
Sanders will at least have assemble an effective cam-doubled his
1986percentage. paign organization. AndIns tead of con ducting t
hat's e xactly what Sande rs
another valiant but hopeless has done.
"educational campaign," the The crowded second-floor
Burlington radical has this offices at 20 9 College Street,time
put together one of the just around the comer from
strongest statewide inde- Burlington City Hall, function
pendent efforts seen in the US as the nerve center of a
grass-
in the past 50 years. roots movement that extendsHow has i t
happened? throughout the state. Insome
For one thing, the objee- ways, it is a typical seat-of-
live conditions in the House the-pants operation, utterlycontest
are much more lacking in assistance fromfavorable to Sanders than
the the Vermont political estab-
situation he faced in the 1986 lishment. Very few
office-governor's race. Rather than holders in the state have
challenging a fairly liberal endorsed Sanders, and his
female incumbent, the office only media backing comes
he now seeks iswide open. from three weekly news.I n ad dition,
m any o b- papers: t he Barton Chron-serversthinklha.Smith,once ic
te , White River Valleythe heavy favorite to succeed Herald and the
VanguardCongressman Jim Jeffords, Press.has turned ina decid-edly
lackluster perfor-
mance.
"~mith had every-
thing going for him in
September," com-
ments University of
Vermont political
scientist Garrison Nel-
son. "He scored an
easy four-to-one vie-
tory over David Gates
in the Republicanprimary. He raised a
10' of money, had veryhigh name recognition
and very low negatives.
And the guy at the top
of his ticket, George
Bush, has come on strong inVermont."
But the GOP nominee has
played it much too safe, in
Nelson's estimation. "He just
h~n't excited anyone, or
given voters outside his core
constituency any compelling
reason to support him. R e-
sides," Nelson continues,
"there's no aura of in-evitability surrounding
Smith. He's run several times
for various statewide offices
often without success. I think
some people see him as
desperate to hold any kind of
politicaloffice, and he's alsogot a bit of a reputation as
aloser."
Democrat Paul Poirier haslikewise failed to capitalize onhis
potential. Much of the
momentum that Poirier ac-
~uired with his upset triumph
10 the September primary
quickly dissipated follOWing
Boucher served as a volunteer
agricultural consultant in
Nicaragua during a five-year
period beginning in 1981.He came to the campaign
from the Nicaraguan NeLWoikin Washington, DC, after
seeing an advertisement in
The Nationier the Sanders-for-Congress fundraisingjob.
Boucher had belped bring in
some significant dollars for
the network, but everything
he knows about soliciting
donations he taught himself
over the past two years.
Direct-mail techniques,
which have proven enor-
mously successful for Sanders
inrecent weeks, areBoucher'sspecialty. "The New Right
got into this area much ear-
lier than did the left,"
Boucher told the Vanguard."I find that kind of ironic, be -
cause the thing I like about
direct mail is that it's a way
for people without wealthy
contacts to raise money from
ordinary donors."
Many of the roughly 7,000'contributors to Sanders' cam-
paign responded to a leller
sent either by the candidate
himself or by one or another
leftist luminary, including I.F.
Stone, Barbara Ehrenreich
and former Berkeley mayor
Gus Newport. The names of
potential givers were culled
from the subscription lists of
several progressive peri-odicals and from the member-
ship rosters of groups like the
Nicaraguan Network and
Jobs for Peace. Boucher con-
tinuously tested dif-
ferent letters and
lists, looking for
maximum returns
from the campaign's
investment in direct-
mail appeals.
"Some people
here give me credit
for bringing ina mar-
velous new techno-
logy ," Boucher said,
pointing to the com-
puter on an adjoining
desk. "But this isn't
an especially high-
tech operation. and
I'm not doing any-
thing differentlrom
what everyone else does in
this business. The main
reason for our fundraising
success is that we have a can-
didate who's saying the right
things in a year when all the
others are talking mush."
Hundreds of activists
around the country agree that
Sanders' message makessense. More than half of the
$300.000 sent to the cam-
paign so far has come from
outside Vermont, generally
from individual progressives
who contribute an average of
about $28. Itwas only thisweek that the campaign
received its first donation
from a political action com-
mittee-a $300 offering from
the SANElFreeze antinuclear
PAC.
The support ofleltists
throughout the country and
allover Vermont has enabled
the Sanders organization to
S a a d o n ' . . so y -.IlootI ........For once, though, a
San-
ders campaign is not des-titute. On the contrary, the
leftist House hopeful will
probably have raised an
astonishing $350.000 by the
time all the conrributions
have been tallied.
That amount, almost six
times greater than his 1986
total, has enabled Sanders totransmit his message to every
comer of the state. Never
before has an independent
US socialist been able to raise
this kind of money for astatewide race. '
Doug Boucher is the
somewhat unlikely hero who
oversees the Sanders fund-
raising drive. Boucher found
out about the mayor while
teaching ecology and agron-
omy at the University of
Quebec in Montreal. Their
political affinities are ap-
parent from the stints
bUy around $75.000 worth of
radio and television ads. It
has also paid for printing of
the 115.000 tabloid handouts
distributed by volunteers
from Brattleboro to Swanton.
Jim Schumacher super-
vises this intensive and far-
flung field operation. He is
constantly on the phone toworkers in the campaign's
four other offices in
Springfield, Montpelier, Rut-
land and Brattleboro, while
also coordinating the efforts
of volunteers who walk into
the College Street head-
quarters. Even though he is
one of 10 paid staffers, it isdoubtful that Schumacher
makes more than the mini-
mum wage, since he puts in
about 100 hours a week at his
job."When Icame back to
Burlington from Tucson
about 10 months ago, I was
absolutely amazed at how
much development has taken
place in Chittenden County
in so short a time," Schu-
macher says. "This is oneof the main reasons I'm work-ing for
Bernie. He can help
save the family farm, which
is what makes Vermont so
special."Asked todescribe a typi-
cal Sanders volunteer,
Schumacher maintained that
the 50 0 people in that cate-gory are "just too diverse to
make generalizations." He
did note, however, that fewer
than 10 percent of them arestudents. "We get very little
help from UVM~and a bit
more from Middlebury and
from the state colleges," he
explained. "Mostly, our
volunteers are working
people of all ages who come
in at night and on the week-
ends, sometimes with their
kids."Like Schumacher, cam-
paign manager Rachel Levin
is a longtime Sanders sup-
porter. Now 28 years old.Levin says she has known the
candidate since she was 11orj2. Her mother, a
Benningtonresident, was one of the
founders of Liberty Union,
the third party under whosebanner Sanders ran four
times in the 19705.For aU its efficiency, Levin
concedes that the campaign
has not been without
problems and tensions. She
does not characterize her
relationship with the can-
didate himself in that way,
however. Doting that "it'sbeen really easy to work withBernie
this time. He's been
very cooperative and under-standing."
Levin hints that the cam-paign has not been entirely
satisfied with the assistance
provided by the Vermont
Rainbow Coalition. Fresh
from its success with the
Jesse Jackson caucus drive,
the coalition gave Sanders its
endorsement in the congres-
sional race this summer. But
the Vermont Rainbow has
concentrated on some 20local legislative contests
around the state, assigning
the Sanders campaign a
secondary priority.
"We've given Bernie ac-
cess to our mailing list and
have provided his campaign
with office space in Mont-pelier," notes Rainbow exec-
utive committee member MaryDeaett, In addition, she says,
several coalition activists
are working as Sanders volun-
teers.
Deaett also stronglydefends the Rainbow's
decision to focus on legisla-
tive races. "Candidates at
that level don't have the
capabilities of a statewide
candidate," she observes.
"We feel that we can have
much more of an impact on
the state House and Senate
races, which is also where the
future of a grassroots move-
ment like ours lies."
Deaett is nonetheless
highly enthusiastic about
Sanders' chances. "Bernie
has a good shot at winning,"she asserts. "Ifhe's really just
three points behind Smith
and i f there are still about 15percent undecided, then it
looks awfully good. My guess
is that a lot of those un-
decideds are people who are
dissatisfied with the process,
and most of them could well
go with Bernie."
The same degree of con-fidence is evident among all
the workers at 20 9 CollegeStreet. Their predictions of vie-
tory can be taken as standard
campaign boilerplate,nodif-
Ierent from the rosy assess-ments coming from Smith
and Poirier headquarters as
well. But there is a certain
quiet conviction in the
Sanders camp that carries an
air of authenticity. It's asthough the staff senses that
something truly historic is
about to happen.
BONDS...continued from page 5
police protection, a point city
officials concede.
Leopold, however, arguesthat the city is far from being
too deep in debt and that if it
were, financial institutions
would not continue to rate the
bonds as a good investment."By the standards used to
analyze the bonded indebted-
ness and burden on the tax-
payer, Burlington is recog-
nized by the financial com-
munity as having a low level
of debt and a low level of bur-
den on the taxpayer,"
Leopold says.
Aldermanic President
Nancy Chiolli said the board
decided to split the waterfrontproposals into three parts in
Case voters decided they
could not afford the whole
package. Chioffi said she is
unaware of any information
that would lead her to believe
the city was heading for finan-
cial trouble.
City officials also argue
that the $6.4 million package
represents the upper limit of
costs for the three projects
and that taxpayers could see
a substantial savings if ex-
pected revenues are
generated.
For example, the cityplans to lease space in the
Naval Reserve Station and
the cost of the park property
could drop if the Vermont
Supreme Court rules the city
has ownership rights to the
four-acre parcel owned by
Central Vermont Railway.
Ironically, the CV land is
smack in the middle of the
Sanders-backed $100 millionAlden Waterfront develop-
ment plan, which died be-
cause voters were unwilling
to invest S6 million in theproject three years ago.
Alderman David Thelan-
der, Ward 6 Republican andmember of the Aldermanic
Waterfront Committee, as
well as Clavelle, argue that ifthe city does not move this
year, the Navy will probably
renovate the building and
stay at the waterfront site.
"The timing is critical.
There are still many ques-
tions from the committee
perspective as to cost, andcertainly costsare critical in
the final analysis, but the fun-
damental premise behind this
is to secure control over these
properties at this 'time and
move forward," said Thelan-
der.
Mark .JohaHn
