Say Anything Blog

Polls show Bernard Sanders, who has served for nearly 16 years as Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives, is well ahead in the race to succeed Sen. Jim Jeffords, an independent who isn’t seeking re-election. The state’s Democrats didn’t field an opponent, and Sanders has consistently led wealthy businessman Richard Tarrant, the Republican candidate who is funding his own campaign, by more than 20 percentage points in surveys.

“Bernie is very much beloved at this point in time,” said Peter Freyne, a columnist for Seven Days, Vermont’s alternative weekly newspaper. “He’s going to get 65, maybe 70 percent of the vote.”

The state’s famed ice cream entrepreneurs — Ben & Jerry — even appear in a TV spot for the 65-year-old Sanders, who has long described himself as a democratic socialist.

“I don’t think of Bernie in that way. It’s just a label that tends to get all sorts of reactions from people,” said Jerry Greenfield, who set the state standard for do-gooder capitalism with his partner, Ben Cohen. “To me, he’s somebody who for years has been fighting for the little guy.”

“He’s a populist,” said the multimillionaire Greenfield.

Sanders’ popularity comes despite a personality that could be described as prickly. His manner comes closer to that of the catamount — the New England name for a mountain lion — than of the kindly grandfather that his rumpled appearance suggests.

“He always seems angry,” said Sara Gear Boyd, a longtime Republican National Committee member. “Bernie Sanders hasn’t changed what he says for 30 years.”

“I’ve known him a long time, and it is hard to warm up to him,” echoed Garrison Nelson, a University of Vermont political science professor. “He’s not very humorous. He often walks around like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

“But then, Vermont is an underdog kind of a state.”

But he breaks with most congressional progressives on federal gun control. Gun regulation should be left to the states, he said, "and shouldn't be done in Washington."

In 1990, Sanders' position on guns helped him defeat incumbent Congressman Peter Smith, who had voted for a bill banning sales of semi-automatic weapons. The National Rifle Association sided with the socialist against the Republican.