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Burns writes: "'No longer will they call my victory a fluke,' Mr. Sanders, then 41, wrote in a letter after the election, to a city-planning expert at Cornell University."

Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1981, only to encounter strong resistance from the board of aldermen. (photo: Rob Swanson/NYT)
Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1981, only to encounter strong resistance from the board of aldermen. (photo: Rob Swanson/NYT)


Bernie vs. The Machine

By Alexander Burns, The New York Times

01 December 19


In 1981, he was elected mayor of Burlington. But the city’s bureaucracy showed him that winning wasn’t everything. So he learned how to fight back.

he young woman on the political leaflet was smiling, but the message printed beside her in bold capital letters was severe. “The last two years,” it said, “have shown that those who made the revolution are not always the best to lead after the coup.”

To voters in Burlington, in 1983, the reference to Bernie Sanders was unmistakable.

What Democrats here were calling a coup was this: A young socialist had captured the mayor’s office two years earlier by a margin of just 10 votes, upending the political order in a comfortable lakeside city of about 38,000. For decades, an old-school Democratic machine had dominated municipal government. In 1983, the party intended to reclaim control by assailing Mr. Sanders’s “unkept promises.”

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