Far away from the halls of Congress, as he continues to rankle Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders is fashioning a new role for himself in the Senate: The next Dr. No.

The Vermont senator, remade as one of the best-known members of Congress, is throwing his weight against some of the most significant bipartisan deals pending in Congress this year. He’s actively urging Senate Democrats to reject a deal reached by House Republicans and the Obama administration to ease Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and has emerged as one of the few opponents of a landmark overhaul of chemical safety laws — the first major environmental legislation in a generation.


Sanders’ stands against those measures are the first signs of how he intends to leverage his newfound notoriety to become a force for the left in Congress once his presidential run ends. Asked how influential Sanders would be on these and other issues once he returns to the Senate, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) responded: “Very.”

“He’s grown a movement, and he is the leader of it, although there are others,” Schatz added. “I think his voice is louder and stronger than ever.”

But Sanders’ contrarian positions on legislation are showing signs of irritating colleagues in the close-knit chamber, where work gets done only by collaboration and with consent. Of Sanders’ opposition to recent deals such as the Puerto Rico legislation and the Toxic Substances Control Act, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) responded: “Bernie’s always been that way.”

“Why do you think Bernie doesn’t have any more senators that are out there beating the drum for him?” added Manchin, who has long worked on the chemical safety measure. “He’s sincere as a heart attack. I like him, he’s a good guy, brings a lot to the table, but doesn’t have a lot of answers for the problems that we’re dealing with.”

Sanders has long been an iconoclastic voice of the left in the Senate, but his positions have generally drawn little notice. Before he launched his campaign last year, the most recent time he had commanded serious national attention was when he waged an eight-hour speech railing against renewal of the Bush tax cuts in 2010 — a maneuver that dazzled liberals.

But, at whatever point he comes back to the Senate, Sanders is poised to be more powerful than ever, backed by more than 2 million Twitter followers and millions more admirers nationwide who’ll be looking to him to help set the progressive agenda.

That means Sanders’ active opposition to the Puerto Rico deal could be the first test of his post-campaign influence in the Senate. He circulated a letter earlier this week urging fellow Democrats to kill the deal and find a solution that doesn’t, in his view, shortchange residents of the beleaguered island territory.

Senate Democrats have been generally reluctant to weigh in on the details of the Puerto Rico legislation. But some liberals, such as Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), are showing some distaste over the House package. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on the other hand, has endorsed the bill, which passed a key House panel on Wednesday.

There was already opposition to the Puerto Rico deal brewing among Senate Democrats without Sanders’ letter, Durbin said, and there have been objections from unions — a critical constituency for Sanders and Democrats.

Sanders has been speaking out on the Puerto Rico debt crisis since last summer, but privately there is some suspicion among Democrats that his aggressive tack against the Puerto Rico compromise is political posturing ahead of the island’s June 5 caucuses. The campaign didn’t return a request for comment.

“I think Bernie is irrelevant to this,” a top Democratic aide said.

A number of provisions in the Puerto Rico deal are problematic for Sanders and other congressional Democrats, including language that allows the governor of the island territory to cut the minimum wage to $4.25 an hour. Sanders and other liberal Democrats are also taking aim at a new oversight board that would oversee Puerto Rico’s finances under the new legislation, because a majority of the members would be chosen by Republicans.

Like Sanders, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) opposes the House Puerto Rico deal. But Menendez, who endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid on Wednesday, dismissed Sanders’ proposal to fix the island’s finances, calling it the “ultimate corporate bailout” because under it, the Federal Reserve would guarantee bonds.

The chemical safety legislation is much less of a fight for Sanders than is Puerto Rico. But his opposition to the deal is notable because the agreement is backed by a broad spectrum of senators — from Barbara Boxer of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts on the left to Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and David Vitter of Louisiana on the right.

Boxer, a key Democratic negotiator on the chemical safety bill and a top Clinton surrogate, noted Wednesday of Sanders: “He was absent from the entire negotiation session.”

“If he were to call me, I could explain to him why this is really important to get done, because it’s better than current law,” Boxer added. “If he were to stop the bill — which I don’t think he will — he would be stopping helping children who have childhood cancers. He would be stopping the ability to go after chemicals that are stored near a water supply. And he would be stopping the ability of the EPA to go into any chemical company and order an independent study on a chemical that concerns them.”

Bernie Sanders camp: We're getting 'zero' pressure from Dems to drop out The Democratic senator is receiving 'zero' pressure from Democrats and party officials to get out of the race.

“But it’s fine if he wants to oppose it,” Boxer added.

In a statement last week, Sanders said he is concerned that the legislation would restrict states such as Vermont from establishing environmental regulations that are more aggressive than those set by the federal government.

But ultimately, his concerns may matter little. The House easily passed the legislation 403-12 on Tuesday, and the Senate is aiming to quickly take it up and pass it before lawmakers leave town for the Memorial Day recess. A spokesman for Sanders in his Senate office said he will not object to speedy consideration of the bill.

On another issue brewing in Congress — criminal justice reform — it’s Sanders’ silence that’s drawing attention. On the campaign trail, Sanders has talked up the need to overhaul sentencing laws. Yet he hasn’t endorsed a Senate bill backed by a bipartisan coalition of senators, including his home-state colleague, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy.

That omission has not been lost on some criminal justice reform advocates, who are urging Sanders’ proxies on the panel that writes the Democratic National Committee’s platform to include the issue this summer.

“He has made this pledge to end incarceration, but he hasn’t put out bold ideas to get us there,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Pushing to include criminal justice reform in the platform, she added, is “one thing [Sanders] could do that really would help take leadership on this and really put the Democrats out there, to have the party prioritize the issue.”

Some of the Vermont senator’s close allies in Congress acknowledge, however, that there will be times they simply won’t see eye to eye with him.

The top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, was the first lawmaker in Congress to endorse Sanders. Though he had a hand in crafting the Puerto Rico deal in the House, Grijalva said he isn’t upset with Sanders’ move to stir up dissent.

“The senator’s opposition to it is something I knew was coming,” Grijalva said in an interview. “We had to produce something, and I wish it would’ve been half a loaf. It’s not … this is not a win-win, this is just a survival for the Puerto Rican people.”

Colin Wilhelm contributed to this report.