Sen. Bernie Sanders with two staffers at Hero’s Welcome in North Hero. Photo taken on the day Sanders closed on the purchase of his lakefront home. Credit: Gabby Timms

Thanks in large part to his successful foray into authorship, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made more than $1 million in 2016. That’s according to his latest U.S. Senate financial disclosure, which he filed Sunday after receiving a 20-day extension.

The most notable source of income: book royalties. Sanders received a $795,000 advance for his best-selling book, Our Revolution. He got another $63,750 for his forthcoming Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, a book aimed at young readers coauthored with Kate Waters. And he took in $6,735 in royalties for his 1997 memoir Outsider in the House.

That’s more than $865,000 for peddling his working-class ideas. Not bad.

Then there’s the $2,521 Sanders earned last year in royalties for his 1987 spoken-word folk album, We Shall Overcome.

Senate rules do not require members to report their government salaries on their annual disclosures, but all rank-and-file members earn $174,000 a year. That, combined with the more than $878,000 Sanders reported in his filing, puts the democratic socialist’s 2016 payday at roughly $1,052,000.

In addition to his take-home pay, publisher St. Martin’s Press paid all expenses on Sanders’ national book tour last November and December, which took him to 12 states and the District of Columbia. Disclosure of the total was not required, and Sanders did not provide it.

Then there’s a batch of retirement mutual funds held in the name of his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders. The Senate only requires disclosure within broad dollar ranges — for instance, $15,001 to $50,000. So it’s impossible to ascertain the exact value of the retirement funds, but they are worth somewhere between $192,000 and $815,000.

In the “liabilities” category, Sanders lists two mortgages: one worth between $250,001 and $500,000, the other worth between $100,001 and $250,000.

Sanders’ most infamous real estate transaction — his 2016 purchase of a $575,000 lakefront home in North Hero — has been concealed behind an entity named the Islands Family Trust. In his Senate filing, Sanders discloses that he is “a co-trustee in a family trust created when we bought a summer home.”

Because the Senate’s disclosure standards are comfortably loose, we know much less about our junior senator’s finances than we would if he, say, released his tax returns.

But he doesn’t do that. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders released only a summary of his 2014 tax return. As the fact-checking website PolitiFact noted, of all the candidates for president last year, “Sanders’ releases are less extensive than anybody’s but Donald Trump.”

Good company.

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John Walters was the political columnist for Seven Days from 2017-2019. A longtime journalist, he spent many years as a news anchor and host for public radio stations in Michigan and New Hampshire. He’s the author of Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives, published by Plaidswede Press.

27 replies on “Walters: Bernie Sanders Made More Than $1 Million in 2016”

  1. Funny that so many on the left refuse to see that their hero is a 1%’er who uses every avenue to avoid taxes while railing against the rich who do as he does.

    It’s also interesting that he got 4x the advance for his book as fellow 1% fraudster porking at the public trough Fauxahontas did.

  2. Has anybody ever read this column before? It’s a column. Opinion. Snark not only included, but expected. The snark and opinion are fairly equal opportunity, but this time, it’s aimed at the anointed one. I love Bernie Sanders, but he’s something of a hypocrite when it comes to transparency. Everybody bashing this piece because it takes on Bernie would be giggling like school girls if it was about a conservative. Pay attention. It’s not that hard.

  3. I am not getting the point of this cover page article on Bernie Sanders and the cartoon associated of Bernie. Do you have a point?

  4. JOHN WALTERS’ hit piece on Bernie is slanted drivel and half presented truths that would fit well on Breitbart or the Drudge report, or better yet, written by the DNC and Hillary 2020.
    Either way, trash writing and trash publishing, Seven Days.

  5. The head Bernshevik, in his self declared Revolution, should be DONATING the proceeds of his new book and the advance he received to ‘The Cawz’ and the ‘Less Fawchinits’ he allegedly champions and NOT his personal bank account and growing real estate portfolio and Trusts. We The People paid his Senator’s salary while he barnstormed around the country not tending to business in DC, all the while the DNC was easily disenfranchising him, so the book proceeds should go back to The People since he wrote it on our dime.
    It’s the only Socially Democratic thing to do unless he wants to continue to be called a sellout and a hypocrite.

  6. How much does bern have in common with the working class he wants to keep his money but tax the rest of us out of ours as all socialists do thanks but no thanks.

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