Frank Roosevelt Sobel - Democratic Party
Account Name: Collatis
Occupation: Senator from Vermont
Political Ideology: New Deal liberalism, progressivism, Keynesianism
Family: Lifelong bachelor
Background: Franklin Roosevelt Sobel was born in 1982 in Burlington, Vermont. His parents were transplants from Brooklyn who had come to Vermont two years earlier. In Sobel’s home growing up, there were only two pictures: one of Franklin D. Roosevelt, for whom Sobel was named, and one of Mayor, and later Congressman and Senator, Bernie Sanders. His parents, union workers themselves, taught Sobel that there is power in a union, and instilled him with a keen sense of justice.
Rather than attend university immediately upon his graduation from high school, Sobel volunteered full time for Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign. The 2000 election was too important to miss. Though he came from a Democratic family, Sobel had determined that the differences between the Democratic Gore and Republican Bush were minimal. Nader seemed to be the only candidate who offered real change. However, as he watched the Republicans steal the election in front of his very eyes, Sobel left the Green Party and committed himself to restoring the Democratic Party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson. The coming years of the Bush administration would only strengthen his resolve.
The next year he attended Columbia University, eventually settling on a degree in Economics. Sobel found himself gravitating in particular towards the work of John Maynard Keynes. Trickle down economists and deficit hawks became his sworn enemies. Sobel was active in opposing the Iraq War and George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. Though Sobel managed to graduate from Columbia, he never took much interest in his studies, seeing them as tedious, and he eventually dropped out of graduate school. From there on, Sobel pursued a career in politics.
Returning to Burlington, Sobel became heavily involved in the ascendant Vermont Democratic Party. He worked for Bernie Sanders’s successful independent bid for the U.S. Senate in 2006, gaining a post-campaign job in Sanders’s Senate office managing policy. After helping to manage Senator Patrick Leahy’s re-election bid in 2010, Sobel was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, where he became a leading advocate of establishing single-payer universal healthcare in Vermont. Sobel supported the eventual “Green Mountain Care” program, but became critical of the state’s lack of progress in regards to the program, resulting in its eventual scrapping. Sobel resigned in frustration from the House, slamming the governor and his fellow legislators for failing to provide for the basic needs of Vermonters.
Sobel at first resisted efforts to draft him to run for Mayor of Burlington in 2018, but eventually agreed to run. He gained cross-party support from the Democratic and Progressive parties, triumphing over a Republican and an independent. As mayor, he increased government transparency, improved public utilities, and re-introduced instant runoff voting for mayoral elections. He proved willing to work with the small Republican minority on the council, but did little to hide his disdain for their party. Only a year after President Donald Trump was reelected thanks to Mark Zuckerberg splitting the vote, Sobel was reelected under Burlington’s IRV system with a majority of the vote. As mayor, he continued to pressure the legislature to adopt universal healthcare, to no avail.
To be continued…
Faith: Judaism (non-practicing)
Strengths: *ADD STRENGTHS HERE*
Weaknesses: *ADD WEAKNESSES HERE*
Miscellaneous
This is a work in progress (I still have three decades to go), but I figured I might as well post the app now.
