Bernie Sanders is serving his third term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2018. His previous 16 years in the House of Representatives make him the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history.
Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, Sanders attended James Madison High School, Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago. After graduating in 1964, he moved to Vermont. In 1981, he was elected (by 10 votes) to the first of four terms as mayor of Burlington. Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York before his 1990 election as Vermont’s at-large member in Congress.
Sen. Sanders strongly believes the constitutional rights and guarantees that make this country great need not be sacrificed in the name of security. Before being sworn in as a U.S. Senator in 2007, Sanders was one of only 66 members in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote against the USA Patriot Act. He also introduced the first legislation in the House meant to undo some of the unconstitutional provisions in that bill. In the Senate, Sanders has continued to focus on these and other important civil liberty issues, including reining in the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, restoring habeas corpus rights, controlling the use of wide-sweeping presidential signing statements and putting an end to torture. He has introduced S. 1168, the “Restore Our Privacy Act,” to amend the PATRIOT Act to curtail overly broad surveillance by the government. He also sent a letter to General Keith Alexander, then-head of the NSA, asking if the NSA spies on Congress.