Bernie Sanders as mayor: the four Burlington terms before the national stage
Photo: Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bernie Sanders moved to Vermont in the late 1960s and ran several unsuccessful races for statewide office in the 1970s on the Liberty Union ticket. In 1981 he ran for mayor of Burlington as an independent against a five-term Democratic incumbent, Gordon Paquette. He won by 10 votes after a recount.
City Hall
Sanders’ first years were combative. The Board of Aldermen opposed many of his appointments, and his supporters built a group of allied council members that became the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of today’s Vermont Progressive Party.
He was reelected in 1983, 1985 and 1987. Several things from those years still shape Burlington. His administration opposed a plan for luxury condominiums and a hotel on the Lake Champlain waterfront and pushed instead for public access, leading to the waterfront park and bike path that exist today. The city helped create the Burlington Community Land Trust in 1984, now part of the Champlain Housing Trust, one of the largest community land trusts in the country. He also emphasized balanced budgets and city services, including snow removal and road paving, that earned him support beyond the left.
After Burlington
Sanders did not seek a fifth term in 1989. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1990 as Vermont’s lone representative, then to the U.S. Senate in 2006. His presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 made him a national figure.
In Burlington, the Progressive Party he helped start has stayed a force in city politics, and debates over development, housing and the waterfront often still echo the fights of the 1980s.
