Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reportedly had a list of hotel demands when he was on the campaign trail, including king-sized beds and low-temperature rooms, according to a new book on the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
In “Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump,” published on Wednesday, author Edward-Isaac Dovere describes how Sanders would request that the temperature in his room be kept at 60 degrees “even if that required having a staffer sit in the room with an open window in the winter to make sure it cooled enough or calling management in to override the system,” according to an excerpt cited by Fox News.
Dovere, a former Politico journalist who now writes for The Atlantic, reportedly said his research for the book included more than 400 interviews conducted over a four-year period.
Dovere said “there was no bending the rules” with Sanders’s demands. He recounted a story about a campaign stop in California when an “annoyed” Sanders shamed a hotel employee for not being able to get the thermostat below 65 degrees.
Sanders watched the employee fiddle with the thermostat as he sat on his bed, Dovere wrote. When she couldn’t get it to work, Sanders reportedly ignored her apology, instead saying, “So, Chloe… You don’t want me to sleep tonight?”
Dovere wrote that Sanders would request hotel rooms away from elevators and ice machines “so that quiet was guaranteed.”
He also noted that the senator liked suites, bathtubs and insisted on king-sized beds, which had to have a down comforter or another blanket in the closet. He preferred that the extra blanket was dark blue and made of cotton.
According to Dovere, Sanders and his staff outlined specifics for hotel bookings in a “Senator Comfort Memo,” which also said to stock his rooms at hotels or events with beverages and snacks, including green tea with honey, Gatorade and cans of assorted nuts.
The senator, however, supposedly did not like hotel room upgrades. According to the book, he would often switch with an aide if he was upgraded to a nicer room.
“If there’s a bomb in there, it’s yours tonight,” the book recalls Sanders joking, according to Fox News.
The book also touches on Sanders’s supposed preference for private air travel. Dovere wrote that chartered flights were “a revelation” to Sanders.
“He would always be a little embarrassed pulling into the private terminals, but boy, did he get a kick out of not worrying about being late for a flight that couldn’t take off without him,” Dovere wrote, according to Fox News.
By the beginning of 2017, Sanders’s staff reportedly composed a document outlining his minimum requirements for the type of aircraft he would need if he had to go on trips that were outside of his regular route between Vermont and Washington.
“Couldn’t be too cramped. Couldn’t get too bumpy,” Dovere wrote.
The Hill has reached out to Sanders for comment on the book excerpts.
According to Fox News, Sanders used to fly commercially before his 2016 bid for the White House made him a national figure.
In 2019, Sanders came under scrutiny by former aides to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who knocked his use of private jets