When Bernie Sanders decided to pursue national politics, one obstacle stood in his way: He had to defeat Vermont’s Republican congressman, Rep. Peter Smith. In 1988, Sanders first ran for Congress against Smith and lost in a three-way race. Two years later, Smith was completing his first term when the former mayor of Burlington challenged him again. This time, the maverick socialist won handily.

Peter Smith occupies a unique place in Vermont’s political history. He is the one-term Republican congressman who in defeat launched Sanders’ three-decade long national political career. And Smith is Vermont’s last Republican congressman.

Smith cites a saying that “if you wanna surf, you gotta get ahead of the wave. In politics, the wave broke right on top of me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Smith has left the Republican Party and signed a letter in 2016 with other former Republican Congressmen denouncing Donald Trump as “manifestly unqualified to be president.”

Smith says he still occasionally participates in programs in which former members of Congress speak to students and citizen groups. He identifies himself as “R-Vermont in the 101st Congress.”  He says with a soft laugh that it is “a little confusing to some people because I’m generally to the left of whoever the Democrat is that I’m traveling with. The truth of matter is when I was in the Congress, I voted to the left of something like 55% of the Democratic Caucus.”

Peter Smith founded and led the Community College of Vermont in the 1970s and went on to serve as a state senator and Lieutenant Governor. After losing to Bernie Sanders in 1990, Smith left politics and Vermont to pursue a career in education. He was the founding president of California State University at Monterey Bay, was dean of the Graduate School of Education at George Washington University, Assistant Director of UNESCO, and is now a professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus. He has written a new book about people who did not attend college but who bring deep experiential knowledge to their work, Stories from the Educational Underground: The New Frontier for Learning and Work.

Smith says, “I couldn’t see it in 1991, but…I think I am doing what I was meant to do. I frankly think Bernie has been doing what he was meant to do. He’s had a major impact on the party and the country.”