I got thrown out of school for protesting against apartheid in 1986. So I went back to rural Vermont, where I was from. I discovered that the progressive mayor of Burlington was running for governor. With no electoral experience, I was made the county coordinator in the county I lived in in Vermont. It should have been a big warning to me about the campaign, but I was overjoyed. I met Bernie not long after at a dairy festival that I staffed with him, holding a sign and handing out buttons to people. He invited me to work in Burlington two days a week, which turned into seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. And the rest is history.

I met Bernie in 1999. I applied for a job — back then, you didn’t know who you were applying to. I remember that I got a call from Jeff Weaver after I sent my résumé in. He said, “It’s Congressman Bernie Sanders’s office.” I didn’t know who he was — or certainly wasn’t very familiar with him. I remember some moment where it was like, “Oh, that’s the socialist guy.”

My first contact with Bernie was not with Bernie, but with Bernie’s world. It was in ’06, when I was working for Harry Reid. I was obviously excited when Jim Jeffords retired, and Reid and [Chuck] Schumer quickly coalesced around Bernie as the preferred Senate candidate in Vermont. I fantasized to my colleagues about Bernie filibustering — what it would be like when he would no longer be limited to one minute but get to spend nine hours speaking!