Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders, Huck Gutman Read Free Book Online Page B

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