Bernie Sanders, the front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is very popular in Oregon. He won the state’s primary four years ago by an impressive 14 percentage points, and a 2019 poll indicated that he’s going to triumph in the state again come May 19.
And it all started with … dentists.
We tend to forget that, before the Vermont senator launched his long-shot bid for the White House in 2016, he was little-known outside his own state.
Sanders, 78, has been in the U.S. Congress since 1991, but he’s been the ultimate backbencher and thus for years gained scant attention in the national media — and even less in Oregon.
In 1992, he earned a brief mention in The Oregonian when Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio signed on to a Sanders bill to create a single-payer health-care system — still Sanders’ signature issue all these years later. (The bill went nowhere — a common occurrence throughout Sanders’ career. In fact, Democratic presidential rival Mike Bloomberg has just released an ad focusing on all the failed bills the Vermont senator has sponsored over the years, insisting it shows Sanders can’t get anything done in Washington, D.C.)
It’s probably safe to say most readers scanned right over Sanders’ name in that 1992 article without even registering it.
The Vermont independent, who identifies as a democratic socialist, scored another blip of coverage in Oregon a few years later when he called Nike’s treatment of its overseas factory workers “atrocious.” But his name again quickly disappeared from the local press.
Then came a 2012 op-ed in The Oregonian in which the senator called “lack of dental access … a national problem” that forces many Americans to “live with extreme pain, and a mouth without teeth often makes it difficult to find and keep a job.” He added that “not only do we need more dentists, but dentists must start serving more low-income people.”
This time his name didn’t quickly drop from the paper’s pages once more.
Letters to the editor poured into The Oregonian responding to Sanders’ editorial.
“In November 2011, more than 300 dentists from Oregon provided free care over two days at our second Mission of Mercy,” wrote West Linn’s Barry J. Taylor. “Over the course of a year, dentists throughout the state volunteer countless hours on dental vans providing free care. The Oregon Dental Association’s charitable arm, the Dental Foundation of Oregon, gave more than $40,000 in 2011 alone to organizations that provide care and education to low-income children in Oregon.”
Portland dentist Jon Goodwin wrote that Sanders’ op-ed “did a fairly good job of delineating the extent of the need that exists, but the solutions remain somewhat elusive. He believes that having more providers would help, but he failed to point out that dentists now graduate about $250,000 in debt and may not be in a position to provide cut-rate dentistry.” He pointed out that dentists volunteering their time is a positive thing but “it does not make a good and sustainable health-care delivery system.”
Goodwin then took the opportunity to suggest an idea:
“The senator also proposes more government-sponsored care. What he doesn’t mention is the proven and extremely cost-effective option of optimally fluoridated drinking water.”
Water fluoridation has long been a contentious issue in Portland, and so the dentist’s letter launched a whole other debate.
After that, Sanders’ name became an increasingly common sight in The Oregonian. By the time the 2016 race for the Democratic nomination began to turn toward Oregon, Sanders was a national figure. In March of that year, thousands of supporters — probably including a few dentists — waited for hours outside the Moda Center in Portland to hear Sanders talk about his vision for America.
