TenuredVulture wrote:Monkeyboy wrote:pacino wrote:Bernie is a federal legislator. Vermont is a state.
I was thinking more of his time as major in burlington. He worked with both sides, was pragmatic, and open to alternative enrgy and other ideas that would move the country forward. I honestly don't know much about him as a legislator.
Both sides? I don't know, but my impression of Burlington, VT is that it's pretty homogenous. I mean, you could almost say the same thing about Rick Perry (remember, Texas does produce a lot of wind generated electricity and Perry was very much in favor of the "Trans-Texas Corridor".)
I thought I read an article from here, but it may have been from somewhere else...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dre ... 10704.html
In 1981, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington as an Independent and defeated six-term Democratic Party incumbent Gordon Paquette by 10 votes in a four-way contest. Voters re-elected Sanders three times by increasingly wider margins: 52 percent in 1983, 55 percent in 1985 and 56 percent in 1987.
Burlington was no hippie counterculture enclave. Although the city attracted many young, educated people because of its natural beauty and the presence of the University of Vermont, it has always had a large working-class population (many of them from French Canadian stock) who, until Sanders came on the scene, tended to vote for moderate Democrats and Republicans. Each time he ran for mayor, Sanders attracted increasing support from the city's blue-collar precincts.
In his first two years in office, the City Council refused to allow Sanders to hire more than a handful of staff, while the entrenched bureaucrats in City Hall sought to thwart his initiatives. Randy Kamerbeek, the city's planning director, "tried to sabotage everything that Bernie proposed," recalled Michael Monte, who worked in that agency. "He told us not to allow Bernie to have any visible successes. He figured Bernie would be out of office after his first term."
After he was re-elected in 1983, and voters swept in a more progressive City Council, Sanders gained a stronger foothold in City Hall. With the support of local Republicans and business leaders, he created the Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO) to carry out his vision for more affordable housing, more locally owned small businesses, greater community engagement in planning, and job development.
When Sanders took office, Burlington's Lake Champlain waterfront was an industrial wasteland. Tony Pomerleau, an influential local businessman, planned a mega-project that included a 150-room hotel, retail space, a 100-slip marina, and 240 condominiums in 18-story buildings. In his first campaign, Sanders pledged to kill that plan. After Pomerleau withdrew his proposal, Sanders backed another waterfront plan that included some commercial development, affordable housing, and generous public access. But after voters defeated a bond measure for this proposal, Sanders went back to the drawing board to envision a "people's waterfront."
According to Monte, who worked on the waterfront project for Sanders and was CEDO director for 12 years, "Bernie wanted to make sure that it was a place with plenty of open space and public access, where ordinary people could rent a rowboat and buy a hot dog. That wasn't just for the elite. It was Bernie who set the tone that the waterfront wasn't for sale."
Thanks to Sanders, the Burlington waterfront now has a community boathouse and other facilities for small boats. There's also a sailing center and science center, a fishing pier, an eight-mile bike path, acres of parkland, and public beaches. The commercial development is modest and small-scale. (On May 26, Sanders kicked off his presidential campaign with a rally at Waterfront Park).
Most of Burlington's business leaders initially distrusted Sanders. They didn't know what a socialist would do once he held the reins of power. But even many of Sanders's early opponents came to respect and even admire his willingness to listen to their views and his efforts to adopt progressive municipal policies.
Pomerleau was then -- and remains today, at 97 -- one of Burlington's richest residents. A longtime Republican, he made his money developing supermarkets, hotels, and shopping centers, and he owns much of Burlington's commercial real estate. For decades, he has wielded considerable political influence, served as chair of the city's police commission, and been its most generous philanthropist.
"When [Sanders] first ran for mayor, he was running against guys like me," Pomerleau recalled in a recent interview.
Pomerleau, who voted against Sanders in 1981, knocked on his door the day after that election. "I said, 'You're the mayor, but it's still my town,'" he recalled.
Pomerleau wasn't happy when Sanders opposed his waterfront development plan, but he gradually got to know the mayor and came to admire his pragmatism, his bulldog tenacity to get things done, and his support for the local police.
"Bernie and I worked very well together for the betterment of the town," Pomerleau said. "We were the odd couple."
