Investigation: Sanders' anti-oligarchy tour spent $608k on elite travel

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, has spent nearly $608,000 on private jets, chauffeured cars, and upscale hotels since last year through his campaign fund, an investigation by The Center Square found. Sanders is barnstorming the country on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, a series of rallies aimed at opposing President Trump and supporting economic populism. To defray its cost, he is raising and spending money through his principal campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders. Even as Sanders rails against billionaires' political clout and economic inequality, his committee has relied on elite trappings more commonly associated with the wealthy. The Center Square examined Friends of Bernie Sanders' filings with the Federal Election Commission from the start of the tour in January 2025 through March, a 15-month stretch when Sanders was the featured speaker at 32 rallies at cities, university campuses, and small towns around the country. More than half a dozen other members of Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a New York Democrat, have also spoken at the rallies. To travel, the committee paid $562,117 for 11 private jet trips and $16,633 for a chauffeured car or limousine service 11 times. For lodging, it paid $29,064 to stay at a four-star hotel 15 times. Paul Dane, chairman of Vermont's Republican Party, said Sanders is out of touch with ordinary state citizens. "There's an incredible disconnect between the average working Vermonter, who would never dream of being on a private jet – let alone making it through the Burlington airport without a hassle – and Senator Sanders flying around the country on private planes," Dane told The Center Square in an interview. A Sanders spokesman did not return two voicemails requesting comment. But Sanders has defended his use of private jet travel as necessary for logistical reasons. "You run a campaign, and you do three or four or five rallies a week," he said on Fox News last year. "[It is] the only way you can get around to talk to 30,000 people. You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United … while 30,000 people are waiting?" Traveling in style For travel by air, Friends of Bernie Sanders' preferred private jet service is Ventura Jets LLC of Farmingdale, New York. From March 2025 to August, the committee paid $352,263 for six flights. "Ventura," the company says on its website, "is the premier choice for private jet travelers who value reliability, safety, and a hassle-free experience."The committee also paid for private jet flights from N-JET of Wheeling, Illinois; Las Vegas-based Cirrus Aviation Services; and East Coast Jets Inc., of Allentown, Pennsylvania.For travel on land, Friends of Bernie Sanders' favorite boutique car service is Transporter Chauffeurs LLC of New York. Since September, the committee has used the business six times at a cost of $12,375. It also paid for the services of Royal Limousine Service of Missoula, Montana, and DC Livery of Alexandria, Virginia.In addition, Friends of Bernie Sanders paid $29,064 to stay 15 times at 13 hotels rated as, or widely considered to be, four diamonds. The hotels included Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel, the Hotel Vetro in Iowa City, and the Westdrift Manhattan Beach Autograph Collection in Manhattan Beach, California. As The Center Square reported in February, fewer than 5% of all AAA-approved hotels in North America receive the rating, 1,750 in all – for featuring "upscale style and amenities with the right touch of service."In February, Friends of Bernie Sanders spent $868 for three rooms at the O. Henry Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, a four-diamond accommodation that urges guests to "(l)et elegance and tranquility restore your spirit."The campaign's preferred boutique place to stay is The Bowery Hotel, a four-diamond accommodation that touts itself as "the standard for service, style, and sophistication in New York City's Lower East Side." Campaign staff have been guests three times since November, most recently on January 8. Their bill: $9,210. To fight inequality As he did during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, both of which he lost, Sanders does not argue for austerity or criticize material success as such. Instead, he contends that the economy is organized in a way that benefits the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans – a structure that obligates elected officials to hike taxes on the wealthy and raise the minimum wage. "Right now, at this particular moment in American history, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of America," he said at a rally on February 13 in Durham, North Carolina, before criticizing a famous tech entrepreneur and former supporter of President Trump. "Today in America, while Elon Musk is close to becoming a trillionaire, 60% of our people in Vermont and here in North Carolina are living paycheck to paycheck." Sanders, 84, connected the economic hardships of ordinary Americans with his own. He, his brother, and parents lived in a three-and-a-half-room, rent-controlled apartment in New York City. "I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck," he said. "And my memories of my childhood are the stresses in our house in a family that just didn't have enough money to do things that my parents wanted us to do, and fights and arguments that trickled down to my brother and me. And all over this country, people are going through struggles that my family went through." Now a national figure, Sanders presents himself as a blunt, no-nonsense crusader. The characterization has been echoed by traditional media outlets such as Politico Magazine, which dubbed him "the ultimate political outsider" six years ago.Unlike most national politicians, Sanders pays for his national campaigns through small-dollar donations rather than rich patrons or corporate political action committees. In other ways, Sanders is also true to his image. Of the $11.3 million his campaign arm has spent since last year, $607,814 or roughly 5%, was for luxury travel and hotels. For the most part, Sanders' campaign has traveled on commercial aircraft – United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest. Or it has relied on commercial rental car companies such as Enterprise and National Car Rental, Amtrak train service, or ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber. Its staff stayed at three-diamond hotels such as the Residence Inn in Miami. A senator of influence and affluence Yet Sanders' own economic struggles have diminished. His net worth is $1.15 million, according to Quiver Quantitative, a site that tracks lawmakers' fortunes. The figure ranks him 316th among 484 members of Congress. His wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, is a former university president. Further, Sanders' use of upscale accommodations is not solely a matter of campaign logistics. He has been a frequent guest at Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs, California, a gated, adults-only spa resort with sweeping views of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. In addition to his stay there earlier this year, Sanders was a guest while running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2016. "Really nice vibe," a Sanders spokesman said in a local newspaper. "He enjoyed it." Sanders seldom acknowledges how his own political operation now pays for upscale travel and accommodations. A generation or two ago, Sanders might have embarked on his populist national campaign on a bus, as Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore did in their presidential runs in the 1990s and Republican John McCain did during his 2000 and 2008 bids for the presidency.Yet that changed in 2000. Instead of buses, presidential candidates turned to private jets to hopscotch from city to city. As the internet sped up the news cycle with social media and smartphones, candidates increasingly sought to appear in multiple states in a single day.Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who worked as a top campaign aide to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in his 2004 presidential bid, said the campaign chartered two 727 planes. "It probably cost us $250,000 over two or three weeks," Trippi told The Center Square.By the 2016 presidential race, the shift to elite travel was all but complete. According to the Sherpa Report, an online publication, not only Sanders but also Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, then-Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, and surgeon Ben Carson used private planes as well. Trippi echoed the report. "Look, I understand this is Bernie Sanders, but his travel is not unusual at all," he told The Center Square. "It's really hard to link up events in different cities ... (Without a private plane), you can't do a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, at noon and do one in Boise, Idaho, at 5 p.m., even on the tarmac."Trippi noted that President Trump owns and has traveled on a customized 757 Boeing, nicknamed Trump Force One, and that the royal family of the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar gave Trump a luxury Boeing 747 jetliner last year.Yet even as Sanders' movement is funded from below, it travels from above. His campaign committee's spending reveals more than his own affluence. It shows the contradictions within his anti-elite movement: a national populist campaign that increasingly borrows tactics and infrastructure from the elites it condemns.