Anya van Wagtendonk is a reporter and multimedia producer based in Brooklyn.

PARIS—The air conditioning was on at full blast inside Joe Allen, the self-proclaimed “oldest American bar in Paris,” where about 30 people were gathered to watch a video playback of the second round of the first Democratic debates of the 2020 campaign cycle.

Some just wanted to learn about the candidates; at least one person arrived in a Beto O’Rourke T-shirt. But prominently situated at the room’s center, a handful of people were there for one man, filling out bingo cards with squares for when a certain wild-haired senator from Vermont mentioned millionaires and billionaires or “bullie[d] a CEO.” They pounded their table when he declared health care a human right. They booed when another candidate denounced socialism.


These were some of the members of France for Bernie 2020, a scrappy group of a few dozen activists who hope to deliver the overseas American vote to Bernie Sanders.

A mix of long-time progressive activists and relative newcomers to France’s storied expat community, this group sees the Sanders candidacy as an opportunity to promote a political structure back home that more closely resembles the one they live under abroad. “This is maybe the only time in my lifetime I’ll ever see the genuine possibility of a democratic socialist becoming president of the United States,” says Penny Schantz, a longtime labor activist and one of the organizers of France for Bernie.

The overseas vote isn’t exactly a major factor in national elections, and it’s unlikely to determine the Democratic nomination or the presidency. Nearly 3 million eligible American voters live overseas, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a government agency. In the 2016 general election, only 208,329 total ballots were cast from abroad—a turnout of about 7 percent, significantly lower than the stateside rate of more than 60 percent.

But for many left-leaning voters living abroad, 2016—and the rise of Donald Trump—marked a turning point. Democrats Abroad, which functions like a state party, sending 21 delegates to the Democratic National Convention on behalf of Americans living overseas, saw its global membership double in advance of the 2016 primary and then steadily increase, according to Julia Bryan, the organization’s global chair. The group, which has chapters in 55 countries and organized the Joe Allen debate party in Paris, has also seen increases in voter registration and ballot requests, Bryan says. Civilian and military voter participation abroad, regardless of party, increased by 50 percent between the 2014 and 2018 midterms, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

If any candidate has an edge with the overseas vote, at this point it’s likely Sanders, who won 10 of the Democrats Abroad delegates in contention last cycle, to Hillary Clinton’s seven. By and large, no other candidate enjoys the organized expat treatment that Sanders does, with some 20 international groups supporting his candidacy, from Mexico to Germany to Japan. France for Bernie wants to build on that popularity and help to make him the nominee.

Yet, like campaigns on American soil, the members of France for Bernie have passionately debated the extent of their mission and how to execute it, the balance between pragmatism and ideological purity and how, simply, to get stuff done while maintaining a value-set that insists on full consensus for each decision. Plus, American-style campaigning doesn’t always map onto French life. Think watching debates hours after they actually take place. See, too, how the 2020 race is beginning to heat up this summer, just as France slows down while many workers take their annual, paid, monthlong vacations.

American expats Jerry Zellhoefer, Penny Schantz and Jim Cohen, all members of France for Bernie, cheer on the Vermont senator at a June debate watch party at Joe Allen, an American-style bar in Paris. | Julie Glassberg for Politico Magazine

The group’s efforts, nonetheless, offer a window into the idiosyncratic, often overlooked world of American political activity abroad—and the challenges of reaching a set of largely disengaged expat voters that ranges from students to members of the military, missionaries to businesspeople. France for Bernie is meeting regularly to strategize and is in the early stages of voter outreach. It will begin to coordinate with the other international groups and likely with the Sanders campaign itself in the next few months, Schantz says.

At the group’s 2020 launch in March, more than 30 people crammed into a small room inside a crêperie in the heart of Paris’ central tourist neighborhood, St. Michel. As waiters buzzed around with plates of crêpes under a mural of mice dressed, inexplicably, in pirate uniforms, the Americans committed to a yearlong slog through the primaries and—perhaps—beyond.

“There are lots of Americans in Paris,” says Jerry Zellhoefer, a dedicated member of the group and Schantz’s husband. “And they are organizable.”



***

May Day, the annual holiday celebrating workers’ rights, was a perfect spring day this year, sunny with just the right humidity. Nearly the whole country gets the day off work, and a massive march winds through Paris. This year, I walked from the Marais to the start of the route in Montparnasse with Mark Cramer, 74, an affable advocate of cycling, the environment and “Medicare for All” who counts himself a member of France for Bernie.

At the parade’s start, the mood was festive. Cramer stood on a street corner and handed out an excerpt of a speech that Sanders had given about May Day, translated into French. “Bonne manif!” he shouted—a good protest! Many passersby took the flyers; some stopped to chat; a handful shouted back, “Feel the Bern!” Which was surprising: The people taking the papers couldn’t vote. They wouldn’t even learn about France for Bernie from the handouts; they would just learn a bit more about Sanders himself.



The watch party was organized by Democrats Abroad France, the local chapter of an international voting body that functions like a state party, sending 21 delegates to the Democratic National Convention on behalf of Americans living overseas. | Julie Glassberg for Politico Magazine

But that was the idea, Cramer told me. People might read the statement, get interested in the candidate, and then tell a friend or a cousin in the States, or start a conversation on their college campus. “We’re communing with people of like minds,” Cramer said. Every action could help the group’s message to ripple out.

Cramer was among the small group of Sanders-supporting expats who first came together in 2015, coordinated, largely, by Schantz. A veteran figure in international progressive circles, Schantz, 60, is a founding member of Democratic Socialists of America and made her career in labor organizing. At meetings, she jokes that she has never once needed a megaphone. She and Zellhoefer, 72, moved to Paris in 1991, when Zellhoefer was hired as the European representative of the AFL-CIO. Schantz describes her support for Sanders as an extension of a “life’s work” of progressive organizing.

Sanders’ Democrats Abroad delegates, of course, weren’t enough to get him the 2016 nomination. But by the time he had conceded the primary to Clinton—a common correction at France for Bernie meetings is that he didn’t “lose”—some three dozen people were regularly participating in the France for Bernie group, Schantz says. Some members also started a France chapter of Our Revolution, the grassroots nonprofit that advocates for the issues that became central to Sanders’ 2016 campaign.

This cycle, France for Bernie hopes to get more American expats to vote—and to vote for Sanders—in the 2020 Global Presidential Primary. The GPP, which will take place on Super Tuesday, functions like a state primary for expats, determining the 21 delegates that Democrats Abroad sends to participate in the Democratic National Convention. (Members of the affinity Republican organization—Republicans Overseas—vote absentee in their home states.)

In France, where, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, about 169,000 voting-age Americans live, the turnout rate in 2016 was 7.3 percent. But France for Bernie members argue that the candidate has particular resonance in countries like their adopted one—a version of the society that Sanders envisions, with universal health care, a robust social safety net and higher taxes on higher earners.

“The fact that I live here makes me believe in his ideas even more,” says Claudia Quiros, 32, France for Bernie’s outreach coordinator. “It was making me feel like I was going crazy from abroad in 2016, when the media and politicians were saying all these ideas that Bernie had, for tuition-free college and a universal health care system, are pie-in-the-sky ideas, when I live in a country where these things are a reality.”



***

An existential question often emerges at France for Bernie meetings—one that might feel familiar to stateside Democratic political organizers: What, exactly, is the group’s larger purpose? Is it to elect a candidate, to support a democratic socialist platform, or to transform the Democratic Party?

Some group members are solely interested in defeating Trump, no matter who his challenger is. Others are invigorated by Sanders himself. But many are trying to push for something larger—a movement that can help shape structural change back home, even if they don’t intend to go back there.

In the 2020 campaign, Jim Cohen, 65, a professor of political science and American studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, sees the roots of a lasting movement—“a real, democratic-left campaign, of a sort you could have only dreamed of before,” as he puts it. Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, he has lived in Paris since the 1970s and, like many of the group’s most involved members, is a lifelong activist. Cohen’s and Zellhoefer’s anti-war activism dates back to Vietnam and extends to the Iraq War. Cramer is active in Attac, a famed Paris-based financial reform group, and says he once marched with Cesar Chavez.



Sanders supporters at the event filled out bingo cards for when the senator mentioned millionaires and billionaires or “bullie[d] a CEO.” | Julie Glassberg for Politico Magazine

A smaller contingent of France for Bernie, however, is made up of younger people in their 20s and 30s, who moved abroad recently and bring a decidedly more “online” approach. Quiros, whose day job is doing communications for global NGOs, is working to harness their social media savvy to promote the campaign’s platforms.

The values inherent to a grassroots political structure can sometimes hamper the group’s outreach. There’s no such thing as marching orders in France for Bernie; imposing a particular strategy from the top down would destroy the “small-d democratic” ethos of the work and kill participation, Schantz says. “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” Mao once said, and Schantz says, half-joking, that this is her approach to coordinating the group, too.

Functionally, this means France for Bernie operates as a series of working groups, which run according to the propensities of their participants. It also has left some newcomers discouraged, feeling that the group’s efforts can lack cohesion and direction.

Simon Lewis, 30, a chef and restaurant owner from California, told me that, at a May meeting, he proposed targeting Americans studying abroad with voter registration information, and offered to set up a booth outside his restaurant during Fête de la Musique, a night of music events around Paris. A small group broke off to plan over email. But Lewis said the communication was spotty, and he ended up calling off the event. In general, he says, the group spent too much time discussing Sanders’ policies, rather than executing a clear outreach plan.

“I value the older group’s experience, and they should absolutely be a part of this thing. And I think there’s plenty of space for the younger crew to get out there and get shit done,” Lewis says. But, he adds, “Unless someone comes in and shapes that shit up, I don’t know how they’re going to get anything done.”

Another 30-something who attended some early France for Bernie meetings told me he wouldn’t be returning, despite his ongoing support for the candidate; he, too, doesn’t think the group was accomplishing much for the candidate.

Schantz says the group doesn’t keep metrics about France for Bernie‘s outreach. In response to concerns about the group’s effectiveness, she said, “A few very new people who have not had the experience of trying to elect Bernie in the Global Presidential Primary may be trying to apply their U.S. experience and transplant that to Europe, and that doesn’t work.”

From now until Super Tuesday, France for Bernie will continue in its own way—hosting events, distributing flyers in tourist-heavy neighborhoods, trying to reach students studying abroad. The consequences, as they see it from their vantage some 4,000 miles from home, are global.

As Cramer noted, while he handed out the last of his flyers on May Day and prepared to bike home: “The president of the United States ends up being the president of the world.”