Former governor Madeleine Kunin still recoils at a male opponent’s claim that, as she recalls it, he’d be “more pro-female than me.”
When Kunin, Vermont’s first — and, to this day, only — female governor, ran for reelection in 1986, Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders told voters that he would do more for women if they replaced her with him.
“He claimed to be a better feminist than I was,” Kunin said this week in an interview with Seven Days. “It shocked me at the time.”
Sanders, now a U.S. senator seeking the presidency, has faced heightened scrutiny over his views on women in politics since CNN reported Monday that he’d declared in a private meeting that a woman could not win the White House in 2020. The other participant in the December 2018 meeting, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), confirmed the report.
“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate,” said Warren, who is also running for president. “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”
Sanders has denied the story. “Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it,” Sanders responded when asked about the alleged remark at a Democratic debate Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. “Anybody knows me knows that it’s incomprehensible that I would think that a woman cannot be president of the United States.”
Kunin, whose path to power in the 1980s coincided and sometimes conflicted with Sanders’, doesn’t believe her former rival. “As far as the conversation between he and Elizabeth Warren, I tend to believe her, since she’s been such a straight arrow on everything else,” Kunin said.
Sanders’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The former governor has previously criticized Sanders over his approach to the 1986 race.
“When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on ‘class analysis,’ in which ‘women’s issues’ were essentially a distraction from more important issues,” Kunin wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed at the height of his 2016 campaign for the presidency. “He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a ‘sexist position,’ he declared.” (Prior to writing the op-ed, Kunin had endorsed Sanders’ rival for the Democratic nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.)
In her 1994 memoir, Living a Political Life, Kunin recalled a rally in Burlington’s City Hall Park the weekend before the 1986 election. According to her husband, who attended the rally in her place, Sanders proclaimed that she had done nothing for women.
Archival newspaper accounts confirm that “women’s issues,” as they were referred to at the time, came up repeatedly during the 1986 campaign.
That September, according to an Associated Press story from the time, Sanders held a press conference to tout his “women’s program.” That included increased funding for childcare centers and educational opportunities for women. He also touted his work as mayor supporting a domestic abuse shelter, job training for women, and a prohibition on housing discrimination against women with children.
“I am extremely proud of my record as the chief executive of the city of Burlington in supporting women’s rights,” he told reporters at the press conference. “If elected governor … I will continue to actively support the rights of women in all areas of our society.”
Days later, at a state convention of the National Organization for Women, all three candidates — Democrat Kunin, Republican Peter Smith and independent Sanders — declared their support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Kunin took the opportunity to defend her record, arguing that she had sought to close the pay gap between men and women in state government, founded a new program to help women get off welfare and hired a gender-diverse staff and cabinet.
“My whole political career has been the personification of the ERA,” she said, according to a Rutland Herald account.
The topic turned testy during a debate in late October when Sanders alleged that Kunin had not done enough to increase the availability of childcare.
“Sanders has made his record on women’s issues as mayor of Burlington into a cornerstone of his campaign,” the Herald reported at the time. “He has sought to show he would do more for women than has Kunin, the state’s first female governor. As part of his platform, Sanders has said major increases in funding for day care are needed to allow more women — especially single mothers — to work.”
Kunin’s response? “Bernie, I would just like to do one thing and that is to stick to the issues and stick to the facts and not question my honesty on any of these issues,” she said during the debate.
In one interview that year, according to Burlington journalist and activist Greg Guma’s book, The People’s Republic, Sanders dismissed Kunin as a lightweight.
“If you ask her where she stands she’d say, in the middle of the Democratic party,” Sanders said in the interview. “She’s never said she’d do anything. The confusion lies in the fact that many people are excited because she’s the first woman governor. But after that there ain’t much.”
In the end, Kunin won reelection with 47 percent of the vote. Smith claimed 38 percent and Sanders took just 14 percent. Four years later, Sanders would defeat Smith to win a seat in Congress.
Kunin, now 86 years old, says she’s disappointed that the country is still debating whether a woman could win the presidency. “It’s unfortunately a question in the air, but I think we can prove the answer is yes,” she said.
That doesn’t mean she’s determined who she’ll support in Vermont’s March 3 presidential primary. “No, I haven’t,” she said. “I’m waiting to see how this sugars off.”
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Just because an article in a marxist magazine that adores Bernie Sanders and despises Elizabeth Warren, has decided that Bernie never said what he is accused of saying, does not make it so. Just because the article has decided that this issue is just is the “centrist Democrats” being against Bernie, does not make it so (Warren hardly represents the “centrists” or the “establishment” of the Democratic Party). This is just another example of Bernie and his supporters, who hate the Democratic Party but at the same time desperately want its nomination, playing the victim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(mag…
This is an absolutely absurd article and really sad that Seven Days is poking a non-existent issue. Bernie has done far more for vulnerable populations (including women within those communities) than many female politicians and leaders.
There isn’t an issue here and if you’d like some better reading on the topic, try this: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/bernie-sand…
1. I do not agree with Ms. Boutin on just about anything, because I am a moderate. But unlike Mr. Oracle, I do not believe that only pro-Bernie, pro-Zuckerman, pro-Prog commenters should be allowed to live in the Seven Days neighborhood.
2. I have disagreed with Mr. Greenberg about many things. But kudos to Mr. Greenberg for pointing out the astounding factual error of a pro-Bernie, anti-Kunin, anti-Democrat commenter about Vermont’s adoption of the ERA.
Ahh once again, people can’t take Bernie’s stark honesty in this phony “can’t-handle-the-truth” society we live-in.
A LOT of sour grapes here. In Kunin’s defense, if I were the female candidate and my opponent made (the totally true) statement that voting for a woman simply because she’s a woman is sexist, I would also get my panties in a twist, any woman would on the face of it. I don’t blame her for getting upset or hating on Sanders, it’s an understandable, natural reaction.
However, having a successful political career & the distinction of being the ONLY woman to ever be elected governor in the state, speaks volumes for Kunin. The only reason to dredge up a 35 y/o issues disagreement, & alleged political smear, is to capitalize on the Warren fiasco and try to “damage” Sanders. It’s as transparent as the Warren campaign’s 11th hour “gotcha” maneuver. Not very classy Governor.
As usual the fact don’t agree with the accusations: in an apples to apples comparison of the issues (from what’s written) it appears that Bernie did do more for women, as Mayor, than Kunin. She would also be angry if he (a man) had showed her (a woman) up in these circumstances, so there’s that. If we’re being honest, I’m going to say: money for childcare is more immediate & direct assistance to mothers who need it, than an elusive Equal Rights Amendment, even though both are important.
People love to hate on Bernie, without much substance. This reads as just another hit piece. Haters will love it, because well…haters. More importantly, the rest of us will see through it.
Vermont ratified the ERA in 1973, the year after its introduction.
I was the head of the Burlington Women’s Council for a decade. I worked with Bernie when he was Mayor and he did do more for women than Madeliene Kunin. The Women’s Council did more with our little budget than the Governor’s commission. We instituted a Women in the Trades program that taught women construction trades where they could make a decent wage, it continues as Vermont Works for Women. At the time some lib Dems thought beauty school was more appropriate. The City paid for self-defense classes for women and girls and people with disabilities.
Kunin says she was all about the ERA but she contributed to its non-passage in Vermont. When the first headline about the ERA in the Freep is Madeliene Kunin Says Ellie Smeal Stay Out of Vermont, you know a campaign that needs women’s solidarity and NOW’s help is already in trouble with this divisive and dumb message from the top. The statewide group to get it passed was run by centrist Dems who refused to admit the feminist base into its highly selective ranks and weighted the votes of organizations by loyalty to Democratic centrism. Additionally the group would not allow even internal discussion of abortion and gay marriage though we knew this would be a focus of the right. In my opinion her strategy or lack of it is why we lost the ERA in Vermont.
This is such a joke, Sanders is so honest, a straight guy.. Is there’s another bernie sanders?? Because the sanders I know is a lying crook, a woman-hater. Remember the paper he wrote that women like being raped, they beg to be raped, they fantasize of being gang-raped. YES he wrote that. !!! He is a LIAR, a dirty low down snake in the grass liar. He told me my husband wasn’t in Vietnam that he was never in the ARMY that my husband lied to me. as most wannabes do. This from a DRAFT DODGER !!! Then how come I have all my husband records and medals??? I made copies of his records and threw them into sanders face, and this liar who hates the Military wants to be our Commander-in-Chief. He’ll be bought off again like he was in 2016. The socialist like his money to much. Now that he’s worth millions he doesn’t trash millionaires anymore..
Bernie’s guilty! #Believethewomanregardlessofeverything
A lot of angry berners out there.
The crabapples don’t fall far from the tree
Congrats Paul for this . Next you should run a hard hitting exposé on how Bernie believed he was the best stick-ball player in Brooklyn in the 50’s .