10 Things Biographer Harry Jaffe Learned About Bernie Sanders

Harry Jaffe still remembers the exact moment he was introduced to Bernie Sanders.

The year was 1976, and Jaffe — now editor at large for Washingtonian Magazine — was a cub reporter in his twenties, cutting his teeth at the Rutland Herald in Rutland, Vermont.

While writing up a story in the newsroom, the young journalist caught snippets of a gubernatorial debate on television, and one candidate with a thick Brooklyn accent captured Jaffe’s attention.

There on the screen was Sanders, four decades before he would launch his 2016 Democratic presidential campaign, running for governor on the socialist Liberty Union ticket. With a mop of curly hair and big glasses, he was already taking on the establishment, railing against imperialism and cataloging the ways he felt the wealthy took advantage of the working class. He would get just 6 percent of the vote in that election, but go on to a storied political career in the Green Mountain State.InsideSources