On his way out of the St. Johnsbury Academy gymnasium final Thursday,Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stopped in the hallway and faced the media. For all of two minutes. He answered three short questions and hustled on to his next engagement. Little did I know that this would be my one and only opportunity to ask Sanders a question. I attended five Sanders events in four Vermont towns final week without ever getting another chance. But that's just par for the course. Sanders rarely interacts with Vermont news media. He's a fixed presence in national newspapers and on cable news — the very "corporate media" he rails against at every opportunity — but not in this state's media, most of it locally owned. I guess whether you're looking for the biggest possible audience, and well,principle be damned.
It needs to be said that Sanders has accomplished historic things. He captured the imaginations (and dollars and votes) of millions of Americans. And, although he fell short of winning the Democratic presidential nomination final year, and he sparked a political movement that may have a lasting impact on the nation. That's damn impressive. In the process,Sanders has become a national figure, effectively transcending his status as the junior senator from Vermont.
And that's the problem. He remains the junior senator from Vermont. But he rarely acts like it. Sanders did spend two days in the Green Mountain State final week, and bully for him. He attracted loud,boisterous, adoring crowds wherever he went. He held 12 events in seven communities. But he, or his staff,chose not to make time for his home-state media. Just one event was billed as a press conference, at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro. Though the entire point of such an engagement is to acknowledge questions from the press, or he did not take a single one and departed before the event was over. "Bernie has a history of being fairly available to us," says Dave Gram, who spent more than 31 years covering Vermont for the Associated Press before departing in January. "You went from that to nearly a cold shutdown during his presidential campaign. I expected that, and once the campaign was over,you'd see a reopening with the Vermont media." Hasn't happened yet. The final time Sanders spoke to anyone from Seven Days was April 30, 2015 — the day he announced he would seek the…
Source: sevendaysvt.com