Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has long been an admirer of Debs and produced in 1979 a documentary about Debs which was released as a film and an audio LP record as an audio-visual teaching aid. In the documentary, he described Debs as "probably the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had". Sanders hung a portrait of Debs in city hall in Burlington, Vermont when he served as mayor of the city in the 1980s and has a plaque dedicated to Debs in his Congressional office.