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Supporters, including the former body man for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), will gather this weekend to celebrate Sanders’ legacy—and sell off a treasure trove of Sanders campaign merchandise.
Sanders never looked any better than on May 17, 2016, the day he trounced his rival, former U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), in the Oregon Democratic primary by 56% to 42%.
That blowout differed from results in adjacent left-leaning states: Clinton beat Sanders in Washington by 5 points in 2016 and in California by 7 points.
But in the Willamette Valley, Bernie was king.
The Vermont senator fared less well against Joe Biden in 2020. And despite Biden’s lousy poll numbers, Sanders has said he will neither run for reelection to the Senate nor mount a 2024 primary challenge to Biden.
“I think Biden will probably run again, and if he runs again, I will support him,” Sanders told CNN in June.
So this weekend, Jesse Cornett, who served as Sanders’ body man (in effect, his personal assistant) in 2020, and two other Sanders supporters, Emma Easley Darden and Jonathan Tasini, are going to sell off a big pile of Sanders campaign loot.
“We’ve got the usual campaign stuff you’d think about like signs, stickers, buttons and shirts, hats and even coozies,” Cornett says. “But we also have some neat limited-edition products like baseball cards from the Field of Dreams game Bernie played in three years ago today, art prints that few have ever seen outside of Bernie’s Vermont headquarters, and Public Enemy concert posters.”
The sale—Saturday, Aug. 20, from 11 am to 3 pm at 3020 NE Rodney St.—isn’t how Cornett hoped his association with Sanders would end.
Cornett, a former Salem staffer and lobbyist, had high hopes going into the 2020 election.
“Once the pandemic hit, I was one of two staffers (me and a videographer), who got to be in [Sanders’] presence,” Cornett says. “We built a studio in his house for livestreams and interviews and such. It was a lot of fun but sad.”