The fact that Bernie Sanders, a senator who has spent forty years arguing that billionaires shouldn’t exist, became a millionaire through book royalties is subtly revealing. Although it doesn’t completely undermine his message, it does add a layer of irony that he has addressed with his usual candor and that his detractors have never allowed him to forget. He said, “I wrote a best-selling book,” to The New York Times in 2019. “If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
By Senate standards, Sanders’s estimated net worth is between $2.5 million and $3 million, which is modest but substantial enough to provide years of political fodder. The funds did not come from a career in finance, inherited wealth, or connections on Wall Street. It was mostly inspired by Our Revolution, which was published in November 2016 and peaked at number three on the Times bestseller list just after the conclusion of his first presidential campaign. Book royalties brought in about $868,000 in 2016 alone. His income exceeded $1 million for the second year in a row the following year, thanks to royalties. That kind of increase is truly remarkable for a man who once made $33,700 annually as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
Sanders was routinely listed among the least wealthy members of Congress prior to the books altering the math. His total reported assets in 2015 were less than $750,000, ranking him 77th in the Senate’s wealth rankings, where the median net worth was approximately $3.2 million. He had worked for decades as a carpenter, earning the meager fees of a documentary filmmaker, and taking a small-city mayor’s salary. His $174,000 annual congressional salary eventually stabilized his finances, and a pension from his time as mayor of Burlington provides a small boost. It doesn’t shout accumulation.
More attention has been paid to the real estate aspect of his finances. Sanders and his wife Jane own three properties: a house in the New North End neighborhood of Burlington, a one-bedroom townhouse in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the Capitol, and a $575,000 vacation home on the shores of Lake Champlain. The most persistent political attacks have come from this third house, which he purchased just months after the conclusion of his first presidential campaign. Owning a lakefront retreat carries a certain symbolic weight for someone who bases his campaign on economic inequality, and he has never fully avoided the optics of it. According to Sanders, the criticism conveniently ignores the systemic issues he has been bringing up for forty years, and his wealth is ordinary by any reasonable standard, earned through traditional work rather than investment portfolios or corporate boardrooms.
It does provide perspective to compare his wealth to that of his Senate colleagues. In a recent reporting period, Virginia’s Mark Warner’s net worth ranged from $90 million to $402 million. Over $100 million was reported by Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal. In light of this, Sanders’s $2.5 to $3 million seems more like the savings of a professional public servant who just so happened to write a few books that struck a chord than the wealth of a hypocrite.
Although it’s difficult to say for sure, Sanders’s financial background may support rather than refute his claims. The average person is not drawn to the Senate. The wealthy, well-connected, and professionally qualified are drawn to it. Sanders came from outside that world and has stayed closer to it than most of his colleagues, at least statistically. Instead of the financial instruments or private equity stakes that fill so many disclosure forms on Capitol Hill, his money came from words and public service.
Observing the years of attacks on his wealth, it seems as though critics have continuously misinterpreted what constitutes a valid criticism. Sanders’ wealth is not the problem. Whether the money transforms him is the question. Evidence thus far indicates that it hasn’t altered his position since the early 1980s, when he was winning the mayoral election in Burlington by ten votes on a budget of about $4,000. He felt at ease with the books. He was not silenced by them.
