From an old article about him during his time as Mayor of Burlington, during a door-to-door visit of residents in a poor neighborhood, wnti the local Alderman George Thabault --
The alderman speaks up. He reminds the woman of Vermont’s property tax rebate program, which surely she must qualify for. Sanders seems to have drifted into a melancholy that deepens as the woman explains how hard it is for her to heat her house in winter, how frightened she is of the effect the new condominiums going up on the other side of the park will have on her taxes, how worried she is about tripping on the sections of the sidewalk ripped up for the new gas main. “I can fall and die tomorrow,” she says. “So don’t wait four-five years for repairing that, eh?” she scolds him. She’s a tiny, silver-haired woman in a housedress, seated opposite the mayor in her favorite overstuffed chair with a large crucifix on the wall behind her. The mayor is on the chintz-covered sofa, his hands clapped to his knees like a schoolboy.
Thabault stands by the door, clipboard in hand, taking notes. “I’ll get that rebate information for you,” he assures her in a low voice.
From an old article about him when he was mayor of Burlington, visiting residents of a poor neighborhood with the Ward Alderman --
She murmurs, “I don’t take welfare.”
The mayor says, “It’s not welfare. It’s money that never should have been taken from you in the first place, for God’s sake.”
The old woman looks at him and smiles indulgently. She clearly likes the mayor. “I shouldn’t say this,” she tells him, “but I saw you on TV the other night, with my son, when they finish fixing North Avenue? And my son says to me, ‘That Mayor Sanders, he’s a communist, you know.’ And do you know what I say to him?”
Sanders shakes his head no.
“I say to my son, ‘Don’t go around saying such things where intelligent people can hear. They’ll think you are stupid.’”
She laughs, a silvery laugh, and the mayor laughs, too, and rising from the sofa, he puts his huge hands on her tiny shoulders, thanks her and makes sure Thabault has got her address.
Stopping him at the door, the woman says, “I told my son that you’re a socialist, not a communist.”
“Precisely!” the mayor shouts.
“My son, he tells me, ‘What’s the difference?’ And you know what I tell him? I say, ‘If you can’t tell the difference, then you should not call the mayor a communist!’”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-mayor/407413/
