By KATIE ZEZIMA
BOSTON — “I’m not here to set any great records, or to make a spectacle,” Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, said Friday, about a minute into his speech on the Senate floor. By the time he stopped talking, nearly nine hours later, Mr. Sanders was an ascendant, if unlikely, Internet star.
Mr. Sanders’s monologue, a marathon riff against the Obama administration’s plan to continue the tax policies of George W. Bush, stirred Twitter users to a roar over the course of eight-plus hours, putting his name atop the social network’s “trending topics” by Friday night. It garnered even more attention than when he was elected to the Senate in 2006 and was considered the first senator ever to identify himself as a socialist.
“I was a little bit nervous having never done this before,” Mr. Sanders, 69, said Saturday in a telephone interview from Burlington, Vt. “I was afraid that after two or three hours I’d have nothing more to say or I’d be tired or have to go to the bathroom. But I was pleased. It was very strange walking on there when the longest speech you’ve ever given in your life is an hour and a half.”
His legs were cramping during the speech, he said, so he jumped up and down for relief. His voice grew raspier by the hour. Toward the end, he was clutching the lectern with both hands, and it looked as if he might fall if he let go. His son Levi Sanders, watching from Boston and certain his father was hungry, considered having pizza delivered to the Senate floor.
Mr. Sanders was tired but has impressive stamina, his son said, something he developed as a high school cross-country runner in Brooklyn, where he competed in the 1,500-meter and mile races for James Madison High School.
“We played a lot of basketball through the years, and he kept in good shape,” his son said.
Mr. Sanders’s wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, the president of Burlington College, said that while her husband can speak for a long time about issues he is passionate about, he is not long-winded in general. “We have to draw him out,” she said.
Mr. Sanders said there was “virtually no preparation” for the speech. On Friday morning, he had a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, then took the Senate subway to the chamber.
Mr. Sanders and his staff went over about 10 points they wanted to make, and Mr. Sanders made sure to circle back to and home in on them in his speech. He said he had intended to talk as long as possible, but had no set limit.
Repeating himself several times throughout the speech, Mr. Sanders said he was aware that people were walking in and out of the chamber and might listen for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time.
“Could I have made it shorter if I knew everybody was watching at one time?” Mr. Sanders said. “I could have.”
There is only one thing Mr. Sanders said he would have done differently: attach the microphone to his coat so he could have walked around rather than stand in one place the entire time.
Standing in the same place about 7 p.m. Friday, Mr. Sanders finally stopped talking.
“I pretty much thought I said everything I had to say,” he noted. “There were ups and downs, but I thought it was pretty good.”
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