[A]t a presidential debate in New Hampshire in February, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked Sen. Bernie Sanders about his new-found affiliation with the Democratic Party after spending his political career running as a third-party candidate criticizing Democrats and Republicans.
How, she wondered, can you be the national leader of a party you’ve so roundly condemned and just recently joined? In 1988, she chided Sanders, your third-party run as an Independent divided the political left and “arguably cost” the Democrats a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, handing it to the Republican, Peter Smith.
Sanders shook his head as Maddow finished, clearly dying to chime in.
No, no, Sanders said, you have it all wrong, Rachel: The Democrat came in a distant third and he was the spoiler.
That Democrat was Paul Poirier.
Friday, the Barre City House representative reflected on the 1988 race: his narrow victory in the hotly-contested Democratic primary over political rival Peter Welch, the comment on farm subsidies that torpedoed his campaign, his heavy drinking throughout the campaign, how his wife found out he was running from a Times Argus story.
For Poirier, the race was a disaster. He finished with 19 percent, a distant third to Smith, who won with 41 percent. Sanders was second with 38 percent. (Sanders went on to crush Smith in 1990 in essentially a head-to-head rematch 56-40. A nominal Democrat ran in 1990 and Poirier campaigned for Sanders.)
What Poirier — who came back to the Legislature in 2008 as a member of the Vermont House — said he most remembers about Sanders from the 1988 race, the last election Sanders lost, is that he had a killer closing at the debates.
“He would say at the end: ‘Look if you think Ronald Reagan is doing a good job as president, then vote for Peter Smith, because he’s a good Republican. Then he’d say if you think that the Congress, which is controlled by the Democrats, is doing well by you, then vote for my good friend — he always put that in — vote for my good friend Paul Poirier. He’s a good liberal Democrat,” Poirier recalled.
“But if you think the system is all screwed up — that vintage Bernie speech — then you should vote for me. It was great. It was kind of hard to” argue against, Poirier said.
Poirier said he didn’t do well in the general election campaign because he felt a letdown after beating Welch by just a few hundred votes in the primary. Poirier wanted badly to beat Welch, who had come to the Senate the same year Poirier joined the House in 1980. Welch went on to become the Senate President Pro Tem, the most powerful position, while Poirier rose to Majority Leader, the second-highest post in the House, where he served as the right-hand man to Speaker Ralph Wright.
Those were heady days for Poirier, flush with power, but at the same time, Poirier said, his drinking was out of control.
He didn’t know Sanders well, his only encounter a time when the then-mayor of Burlington came to the Democratic Party caucus to make his case for funds to upgrade the city’s sewer and rainwater pipes but had to “zing” the caucus before he made his pitch.
“The feud was still going on,” Poirer said, adding Sanders and the Progressives engaged in major battles in the Queen City with the old line Democrats.
When he was mayor, Sanders would occasionally say he’d rather work with the Republicans, who had a fixed ideology, than the Democrats, whose positions, he would say, were always shifting.
The race was tight after the primary. (Secretary of State Jim Guest finished third and was accused of taking down a rival’s political poster). Poirier’s downfall in the general election came, he and others said, when he appeared before the Free Press editorial board and said he would favor an end to farm subsidies. The next day, reporter Sue Allen (who went on to be a spokesperson for Gov. Howard Dean and now works in the Shumlin administration) wrote a front-page piece.
“From that moment, I spent almost the last five weeks of the campaign, even with help from (Sen. Patrick) Leahy, trying to explain what I meant. The environmentalists interpreted it as oh, he wants to have all this development of farmland, which is absolutely (untrue), I had just chaired the governor’s committee on growth,” Poirier said.
“Sometimes you make a statement and it haunts you for the rest of the campaign and we never recovered. Bernie gained as a result of my slipping,” Poirier said.
One of the issues Hillary Clinton has criticized is gun control, claiming Sanders has not supported important restrictions like the Brady Bill and is too cozy with gun rights groups, a claim Sanders has categorically rejected.
Poirier, who is supporting Sanders over Clinton, said Sanders is right. Vermont gun rights groups supported Smith, said Poirier would be an acceptable choice but were definitely anti-Sanders. (That changed when Smith supported an assault weapons ban and gun rights groups turned on Smith, supporting Sanders in 1990.)
“In the ‘88 election, it was very clear that the pro-gun people, Anybody but Bernie, so he is absolutely correct when he talks about that,” Poirier said.
Poirier, who says he drinks infrequently now, said he’s been impressed by Sanders’ fundraising prowess. He’s been surprised by Sanders’ weakness drawing support among African-Americans and other minorities when “his message are all things that would be very good for them,” Poirier said.
The two, Poirer said, share “mutual respect” for one another. Poirier did radio advertisements for Sanders in some of his Congressional races, while Sanders has provided Poirier a blurb of support in his Vermont House races.
A few ironies. Welch today serves as Vermont’s congressman.
And while they share respect, Sanders and Poirier right now don’t share political parties and have in effect switched. In 2009, Poirier left the Democratic Party and is now an Independent. Sanders, who starting with his upset 10-vote victory for Burlington mayor in 1980, has run as an Independent until he jumped into the fight for the Democratic nomination.
Poirier laughed at the turn of events.
It’s like the saying, he mused: If you wait long enough, things change.
