Jane Sanders' Best Advice for Political Wives: Get a Desk So They Know You Are There

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane Sanders, speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona March 15, 2016 by Gage Skidmore.

Writing for New York Magazine’s The Cut, Bridget Read digs deep into political wife Jane Sanders in The Original Sandernista: For richer or poorer, Jane Sanders married a movement.

The reality of Jane Sanders’ life choices — which she appears to embrace with intense enthusiasm and zero reservations — is largely defined by our efforts to procure a copyright free images of her. The Google images are all about Bernie.

Fifty years ago when she was still Jane Driscoll, the 30-year-old divorced mother of three asked for a desk in City Hall, appropriate Jane believed to her new role heading up the mayor’s youth task force.  “She is also,” wrote the Burlington Free Press at the time, “the mayor’s girlfriend.”

Fast forward 25 years when the desk arose as a topic between the now-married Jane Sanders and Connie Schultz, the wife of Sherrod Brown, who was elected to the US Senate in 2006. Schultz, a journalist on a leave of absence from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recalls asking Jane about the desk, “Why would I do that?”

“They need to know you’re there,” Jane replied.

“To Jane, the desk was a symbol that she was there to work, not just to visit occasionally as the senator’s wife. “They,” in Schultz’s memory, referred to the senator’s staff and those with whom he would be working in government.” Read on at The Cut about one of America’s most prominent, in the shadows political wives and committed activist Jane Sanders.