[S]en. Bernie Sanders is quickly assembling his team after announcing Tuesday that he is running for president.
Hours after the announcement, the Daily Beast reported that Faiz Shakir, a progressive activist and political director for the American Civil Liberties Union, would manage Sanders’ 2020 campaign.
Today the campaign names its four co-chairs: Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s and a prominent Vermont progressive activist; U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who has co-sponsored a number of bills with Sanders in the past year; Nina Turner, the president of Our Revolution and a former Ohio state senator; and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.
“To win this election and build a movement to defeat Donald Trump, we must bring together a team prepared to fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice — and that’s exactly what Nina, Ro, Carmen and Ben have been doing their entire lives,” Sanders said in a statement announcing the co-chairs.
Among the chief criticisms of Sanders’ 2016 run was his inability to break through with minority voters. Among the four chairs and campaign manager, there are four people of color, including Turner, a black woman, Shakir, a Muslim man, Cruz, a Latino, and Khanna, whose family is of Indian descent.
Cohen, the lone white man in that group, is a resident of Williston. He said Thursday that he has been supporting Sanders since he emerged on the Burlington political scene more than four decades ago.
“He has remained true to his values and has been incredibly consistent and those values, which are about creating a country that works for regular people as opposed to today’s rigged economy,” Cohen said in a telephone interview.
The ice cream mogul has been a leading advocate for campaign finance reform in Vermont and on the national level, an issue that Sanders has both championed while showing that campaign war chests need not rely on corporations. Sanders raised $6 million in the first day after announcing his 2020 campaign.
Cohen and his company are also politically active on social issues. He said his political activity is distinct from the sort of funding he is fighting against.
“I am not a rich guy that’s buying politicians. I’m not a corporation that’s contributing billions of dollars to politicians, PACS, Super PACs, parties, in what is clearly bribery,” he said.
“Corporations are political creatures by nature, what is different about Ben & Jerry’s is that most corporations are active politically in a covert manner and in their own narrow self interest, and Ben & Jerry’s has been active politically in an overt manner in the interest of people who are oppressed,” he said.
Cohen added that Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, shared those entrepreneurial values.
“Bernie is a capitalist, he believes in a form of capitalism that serves the greater needs of society,” Cohen said. “And Ben & Jerry’s is a really great example of that kind of business and it is a way of doing business that’s diametrically opposed to the way the guy who currently occupies the Oval Office does his business, which seems more like a mob operation to me.”
One area where Cohen and Sanders have disagreed over the years is on the basing of F-35 fighter jets in the Burlington area.
Cohen has been among the most outspoken opponents of the jets, going as far as hauling a speaker around Burlington blasting the sound of a jet engine to rally people to vote against the basing. Sanders, along with the other members of Vermont’s delegation to Washington, has been supportive of the fighter jets coming to the Green Mountains.
Cohen said he’s talked to Sanders about the issue a few times, but to no avail. “That’s one thing he and I do not agree on,” he said. “And anytime I can find a politician with whom I agree 98 or 99 percent of the time, I’ll take that.”
Sanders broke the news of his campaign to Bob Kinzel at Vermont Public Radio, the only local news organization that he has granted an interview to in months, if not years.
Cohen’s support for local causes extends to the local media, and he’s easily accessible despite his prominence. Does it bother him that Sanders rarely talks to reporters in his home state?
“I’ve certainly seem some articles in the local press that tend to be pretty picayune,” Cohen said. “Saying the guy isn’t present enough here in Vermont, well you know, Vermont is a part of our country and the people in Vermont are getting screwed just like the rest of the people in the country are, and he’s been going to bat not only for the people in Vermont but for the people in the entire country, and that works for me, so I don’t know.”
Does Cohen think Bernie can mobilize the sort of energy he did in 2016, despite all the differences — such as entering as the front-runner in a crowded field with many candidates who share his progressive agenda?
“I guess that’s the big question — I mean it certainly looks based on the early fundraising reports that there’s a whole lot of people that are avid Bernie fans,” he said. “There’s never been a potential president who has been so steadfast for so long whose been so authentic for so long.”
Cohen added that Sanders’ 45 years in politics would serve him well if he made it to the Oval Office. “He understands what it’s going to take to overcome all of the resistance once he gets into office,” he said.
Cohen said he also liked what he heard from some other folks in the race.
“There’s so many really good candidates running and it’s so early in the race,” he said. “I’m not that familiar with many of them but you know I’ve heard great stuff from Tulsi Gabbard, I’ve heard great stuff from Elizabeth Warren … that’s all I can say, I haven’t studied the field.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who has been a frequent collaborator with Sanders since he was elected to Congress in 2017, said the Vermont senator’s work over the last two years has placed him far and away the most qualified person in the the Democratic 2020 presidential field.
Khanna said Sanders’ legislation pressuring Amazon owner Jeff Bezos to offer his employees a $15 per hour minimum wage, and his work to end U.S. involvement in the civil war in Yemen are just two examples of how Sanders has delivered on policy he spoke about during the 2016 campaign, but had little action to back up his words.
“It’s not just he has progressive values, but he knows how to get things done in Washington, And this is different than what he was able to do in in 2016,” Khanna said. “Now he has a real track record of delivering on these issues.”
