When Sanders was elected as mayor of Burlington, he appointed Jane Driscoll, then his girlfriend to head his administration’s Youth Office. Originally an unpaid position, Sanders eventually put her on the payroll despite the objections of the city council. Gotta love a little nepotism.



Oh yes, the job was never posted so that outsiders could apply. At the time, a local paper noted that Sanders had never provided evidence as to her qualifications for the position, other than who she was.



In 1988, after the couple was married, Jane received a huge pay increase. One newspaper reported the resulting outrage over the move. “Political sparks flew at Burlington’s annual city meeting Monday night as Democratic alderman raised a series of questions concerning a hefty pay raise for Mayor Bernie Sanders’ new wife and whether she should continue to hold her job as director of the Mayor’s Youth Office.”



Good to know that Sanders got an early start sucking off the teat of the taxpayers.



In 1990, Crazy Bernie was elected to Congress, and stunningly Jane Sanders became a member of his staff, serving in various positions such as chief of staff, press secretary and political analyst. After nearly ten years in Congress, Jane Sanders set up a company that operated under three different names to provide income tied to Sanders’ political career.



On Sept. 27, 2000, the Sanders clan formed Sanders & Driscoll LLC, a for-profit consulting company run by Jane, her daughter Carina and son David. Quite the cozy little family arrangement. The business operated under two trade names: Leadership Strategies and Progressive Media Strategies. But hey, those Bernie Bros willingly give up all their nickels, dimes, and quarters to this charlatan. Sanders was certain to make sure that the above entity was formed just a few weeks before the 2000 election.



The Sanders’s ran the above entities out of their home on Killarney Drive in Burlington. These companies served to feed cash to the Sanders family. It is unknown exactly how much the Sanders clan had funneled to them because Sanders’ financial disclosure forms, required to be disclosed since he is a member of Congress, only listed “more than $1,000” as the amount of income earned from these consulting firms. Schweizer said that he found some campaign money flowed through the LLC’s.



While Sanders was running for reelection in the early 2000s, critics said that “Sanders doled out more than $150,000 to his wife and stepdaughter for campaign-related work between 2000 and 2004.”



During one such campaign, Jane served as a “media buyer” for his reelection. According to Schweizer, media buying is a “murky but potentially highly lucrative stream of income for those involved in political campaigns.” Modern American political campaigns dump tons of money into television advertising and other forms of media. The media buyer handles the purchase of airtime and secures contracts with media outlets.



The financial windfall comes because a typical media buyer receives a commission of about 15 percent of the cost for a media campaign. It is fairly easy to figure the math. If a campaign were to spend, say $1,000,000 on television ads, the media buyer would, based on that commission figure, reap a commission of $150,000. What makes this arrangement even more suspicious and maddening is the fact that the media buyer’s commission is not subject to disclosure.



In the example cited above, the FEC report will show only the $1 million dollar media buy. The fact that Jane Sanders is the spouse of a politician, in this case Sanders, she is only required to disclose that she made “more than $1,000” from her businesses. What was Jane Sanders’ background in media buying? Great question…she had none. However, in Bernie Sanders’ 2006 campaign, she worked with two media buyers by the name of Barbara Abar Bougie and Shelli Hutton-Hartig. These two would become significant names when Sanders political ambitions went national.

