While Bernie Sanders jets around the country on his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a growing number of Vermonters are asking a simple, reasonable question: “Who is he actually fighting for?” The facts suggest Bernie is no longer the scrappy outsider battling corporate power—he’s a fully entrenched national political brand, powered by millions in donor cash and buffered by adoring media. In short, Bernie Sanders has become Vermont’s very own oligarch.
“No One Needs That Much” — Except Bernie?
At his rallies, Bernie often leans into lines like:
“You would think that if you had a few billion dollars or $10 or $20 billion, you would not feel obliged to step on the backs of poor people to become even richer.”
It’s effective rhetoric—but it’s also carefully crafted moral relativism. He never says how much is too much. He never defines an acceptable wealth ceiling—he just lets the crowd fill in the blank, usually pointing their outrage at a carefully selected villain—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or “Wall Street.”
But if the question is how much is too much, it’s fair to ask: how much has Bernie made?
According to his financial disclosures from 2022 and 2023, Sanders earned over $320,000 in book royalties from Penguin Random House—one of the largest international publishing conglomerates in the world. He also collects a public pension from his time as Burlington’s mayor, has a net worth estimated between $2 and $3 million, and owns three homes—including a $600,000 lakefront house in North Hero.
Notably, he doesn’t list his $174,000 Senate salary in his disclosures. Why? Because the Senate ethics rules don’t require it—it’s already public. But it’s a clever omission that allows him to keep declaring how he doesn’t “make money from public service,” even though he’s pulled in well over $6 million in cumulative federal salary since joining Congress in 1991.
Who’s the Oligarch? – Bernie vs. Elon Edition
| Category | Bernie Sanders | Elon Musk |
|---|---|---|
| Official Title | U.S. Senator, VT | CEO (Tesla, SpaceX, X, etc.) |
| Base Salary | ~$174,000/year (Senate) | $0/year (Tesla) |
| Reported Income (2022) | $170K book royalties + pension | $0 in salary; billions in stock awards |
| Net Worth | ~$2–3 million | ~$190 billion |
| Homes Owned | 3 homes, including a lakefront summer house | 1 tiny house (allegedly), + friend’s guest rooms |
| Taxpayer-Funded Benefits | Health care, pension, staff, office, travel | None |
| Campaign Funding | Heavily out-of-state; ActBlue, academics, tech | Doesn’t campaign—gets blamed in campaigns |
| Speech on Billionaires | “No one should have that much money” | “I’m trying to colonize Mars” |
| Donor Transparency | 157,000+ ActBlue donations, incl. foreign-linked | Doesn’t ask for donations |
| Transparency on Income | Omits Senate salary in disclosure (allowed) | Doesn’t list income—because it’s technically $0 |
| Scariest Fact | Has the loyalty of activist foot soldiers | Can tank markets with a tweet |
The Result?
Both wield enormous power and influence.
But only one:
- Claims to fight oligarchy while being funded by it
- Collects government pay while preaching anti-establishment
- Uses campaign donations to tour the country and scold billionaires
The Shell Game of “Grassroots” Donors
Sanders is famous for boasting that his campaign is “funded by the people”—not billionaires. But recent analysis of his 2023–2024 campaign finance data tells a murkier story.
His campaign, Friends of Bernie Sanders, reported over 338,000 individual donations. Sounds impressive—until you look at the breakdown:
- Only 4,296 donations came from Vermont. That’s barely 1.3% of the total.
- Vermonters gave just $492,000 of the $7.8 million raised.
- That means over 93.7% of Bernie’s financial support comes from outside the state he represents.
More interesting still: over 157,000 donations were routed through ActBlue, a conduit platform that bundles and anonymizes grassroots contributions. While legal, this structure muddies the waters—because donors can contribute using alternate names, third-party credit cards, and even foreign mailing addresses, making it difficult to verify where the money truly originates.
And the surprises don’t stop there.
Among Bernie’s donors are hundreds with foreign mailing addresses—including Canada, the U.K., Switzerland, Australia, and Italy. One woman from Canada donated 113 separate times, often in tiny amounts like $2 or $2.70. The total foreign-linked contributions top $20,000, all relying on a legal gray area: the honor system. The FEC prohibits foreign nationals from donating to U.S. candidates—but if they check the “I’m a citizen” box, there is no real verification.
So while Bernie claims to fight “dark money” and “foreign interference,” his own donor base includes foreign-linked contributors, high-tech donors from Google and Microsoft, and elite academics and lawyers from coastal metros.
Vermont vs. Out-of-State Contributions
| Category | Count of Donations | Total $ Given | Average Donation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vermont | 4,296 | $492,790.28 | ~$114.71 |
| Out-of-State | 334,633 | $7,391,932.69 | ~$22.09 (on average) |
Bernie Sanders received 157,773 donations via ActBlue, totaling $3,508,684.55. That’s nearly half of his total campaign contributions for the 2023–2024 cycle—channeled through a platform that, while legal, makes it difficult to trace the full origins of individual donations at scale.
🔎 Takeaway:
Only ~1.3% of donations came from Vermonters by count, and just 6.3% by dollar amount. Bernie may represent Vermont, but his financial engine is overwhelmingly national.
Top Occupations Donating to Bernie
| Occupation | Total Donated |
|---|---|
| CONDUIT TOTAL (bundled) | $3,017,600.82 |
| NOT EMPLOYED | $1,589,945.53 |
| Teacher | $75,738.34 |
| Retired | $71,834.37 |
| Attorney | $56,963.22 |
| Software Engineer | $55,573.31 |
| Professor | $54,852.16 |
| Physician | $52,268.00 |
| Engineer | $51,050.01 |
Takeaway:
The top “donors” aren’t working-class union folk—they’re a blend of academics, lawyers, tech workers, and doctors. Not villains, but definitely not scraping by.
Top Employers
| Employer | Total Donated |
|---|---|
| NOT EMPLOYED | $1,691,980.67 |
| SELF EMPLOYED | $322,835.20 |
| $11,751.80 | |
| Apple | $5,258.50 |
| Microsoft | $3,632.00 |
| Amazon | $3,271.65 |
| MIT, UCLA, CUNY | All present |
Takeaway:
Bernie rails against tech oligarchs, but his donors come from Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft—aka the same Silicon Valley “elites” he claims to be fighting.
And guess what? “Self-employed” and “not employed” are often fuzzy categories for investors, trust fund recipients, or high-net-worth individuals.
The Vermont Workload: Light. Very Light.
While building his national brand, Bernie has left a gaping hole in his core duty: representing Vermont.
He’s been in Congress since 1991 and the Senate since 2007. Yet he has authored no major legislation that directly addresses Vermont’s top challenges—rural school consolidation, the housing crisis, the opioid epidemic, or the collapse of small dairy farms.
Compare that to Vermont’s own Senator Patrick Leahy, who brought home billions in infrastructure and research dollars over his career. Or Governor Phil Scott, who focuses relentlessly on budget balance, workforce development, and practical improvements to everyday Vermonters’ lives.
Even Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of neighboring New York has done more for rural areas—securing federal help for upstate hospitals, broadband, and PFAS cleanups.
Bernie? He flies to Seattle or Los Angeles to talk about economic injustice, then posts clips on social media to keep the movement energized.
The Performance vs. the Product
The image of Bernie Sanders as a public servant is harder to reconcile with the reality of how he operates today. He is a celebrity activist with a loyal national following and a deeply embedded fundraising machine. He wields influence. He owns media cycles. He earns royalties. And he collects a taxpayer-funded salary while doing very little legislative heavy lifting for his actual constituents.
If power, money, and unaccountable influence define oligarchy, then it’s time we stop pretending Bernie is on the outside of it. He is the oligarchy now—just wearing a flannel shirt instead of a suit.
Final Thought
Bernie Sanders built a revolution—but Vermont became his platform, not his priority.
He made the working class his brand—but made national fame and small-dollar millions his business.
And when all is said and done, Vermonters are left wondering:
Who’s representing us while Bernie’s out fighting billionaires with a billionaire-sized movement of his own?
And it shows.
Dave Soulia | FYIVT
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