Donald Trump talks with supporters and signs autographs during a campaign stop at the Flynn Center of the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vt., Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. 2016 Trump disrupts Sanders’ stronghold Vermont rally roils liberal bastion as the GOP leader taunts a progressive icon.

Burlington, Vt. — Donald Trump’s Thursday night rally has created the biggest political fracas here since 1981, when in the midst of the Cold War the city elected a socialist mayor named Bernard Sanders.

Ahead of Trump’s visit — held just yards from Sanders’ campaign headquarters on one side, the birthplace of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign on another, and the bar where Phish played its first gig on a third — leaders in the state called him “megalomaniacal” and “disrespectful,” comparing him to “a transient strain of Ebola.” And those were just the Republicans.


In Burlington — a liberal utopia that picks up residents’ recycling at the curb but forces them to haul their own trash to the dump — the responses from the city’s large and variegated left included a “Love Trumps Hate” candlelight vigil along the road from the airport, a “Get Out Trump March” through the city’s streets, a “silent presence” across the street from the event, and a “Rally for Love and Unity” at the site of a popular farmer’s market. The deli next door to Trump’s rally hawked a special sandwich called “The Donald,” bologna on white bread slathered with bacon slices, or B.S.

Ahead of the event, a line of thousands — including Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Ben Cohen — snaked across six blocks while event staff weeded out Trump detractors and hundreds of protesters looked on. One of many pro-Sanders protesters wore a Superman costume and held a sign calling the senator a “superhero.”

Taking the stage, Trump, a critic of environmental regulation, praised Vermont’s clean air. Like many of his rallies, this one was interrupted by protesters – including some chanting “Bernie” — about a dozen times. He suggested confiscating one protester’s coat as punishment.

“We all like Bernie. Do we like Bernie?” Trump said of the hometown senator. “Well if you want to pay a 90 percent tax.” As he has in the past, Trump criticized Sanders for letting Black Lives Matter protesters take over one of his rallies this summer. He also relished the prospect of a general-election matchup. “I would love to run against Bernie,” he said. “That would be a dream come true.”

Trump mocked Sanders’ rival for the Democratic nomination Martin O’Malley for throwing a recent Iowa event that drew only one attendee and called for the former Maryland governor to drop out of the race. “At least Bernie gets some action,” he said.

He also expressed gratitude to Jeb Bush for calling him a “gifted politician” earlier on Thursday. “I would never say that about my opponent,” Trump remarked. “I would say my opponent has nothing going for him … my opponent is a loser.”

Trump enjoys strong support among Republicans across most regions in the country, but Vermont appears to be one of the few holdouts. A September poll in the state showed that as many Republicans supported the presidential bid of their self-described “socialist” senator, Sanders, as supported Trump. That 12 percent support put both men in a three-way tie for first with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, but it is among the weakest levels of support Trump has registered in any state since surging to the top of the Republican pack this summer.

“Vermont Republicans are definitely different,” said Dave Sunderland, chairman of the state party. “We’re much more issue-focused. We’re much more economically focused. We’re much more focused on the type and competence of leader than we are in the presentation, in the political rhetoric, that we see in many other areas of the country.”

In recent years, Republicans elsewhere in the region have tended toward Trump’s brand of brash, outsider politics. Upstate New York, across Lake Champlain from Burlington, is a hotbed of Trump support. Maine, once known for moderate Republicans such as Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, has twice elected Tea Party favorite Paul LePage as governor. In New Hampshire, where Trump leads the field, his campaign co-chair is state Rep. Steve Stepanek, a close ally of former House Speaker Bill O’Brien. Another anti-establishment outsider, O’Brien now leads a breakaway caucus of House Republicans that frequently defies party leaders in the New Hampshire legislature.

But in Vermont, this disaffected strain of Republican politics has not taken hold. That may be in part due to the influence of Sanders, who held statewide office for two decades and won over many rural voters by speaking to the same populist economic concerns that Trump has on issues like trade while taking relatively moderate positions on gun control.

Instead, the third force in Vermont politics is the Progressive Party, the successor to the Progressive Coalition that backed Sanders’ first political bids here in the 1970s and at times outflanks the senator on his left.

On the eve of Trump’s visit, the Progressive Party’s Burlington branch held its monthly drink-up at Three Needs, a downtown bar that did not launch Phish’s career but does prominently display a poster from one of the jam band’s concerts. Trump’s impending arrival dominated the discussion.

“The real question has been how to respond. What is going to be most effective? Do we ignore it? Do we protest it? Do we go and try to interrupt?” mused Max Tracy, a party member and the city councilor from Burlington’s most liberal ward. “There is no real consensus.”

One bearded party member who works at the University of Vermont but declined to provide his name jokingly suggested lynching Trump in a public park – an idea that kicked off discussion of a historical hanging tree that once stood in the city.

Other residents said they were determined to ignore the brouhaha. Suspicion was widespread throughout the city that Trump’s visit was a ruse designed to ignite conflict and create images of the candidate standing up to crunchy leftists rather than to rally any local support. In the days before the rally, Trump began airing ads on Burlington-based WCAX, a television station that reaches much of northern New Hampshire. Asked about this theory, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski responded that Trump was running “a different type of campaign.”

On Thursday morning, the first person in line, Mark Conrad, showed up for the 7 p.m. rally at 4:30 a.m. He was determined to get inside and ask Trump tough questions about the public safety consequences of his campaign’s decision to dispense 20,000 free tickets for the event at a 1,400-seat theater.

The campaign’s move came in response to ticket orders placed by Trump detractors in a failed attempt to leave empty seats in the theater. It prompted the city police department to warn attendees on Wednesday that many would not make it inside the venue and that lawbreakers would be arrested. Tracy said the city was quintupling its usual contingent of on-duty police officers from six to 30 for the event.

Sanders, meanwhile, issued a statement welcoming Trump to the state and encouraging him to learn about Vermont’s values.

Inside the senator’s third-floor campaign headquarters, volunteers were abuzz on Thursday afternoon about the gathering commotion. But Sanders’ deputy communications director Arianna Jones said staff would not be heading down the street to take in the spectacle. “We’ll be working,” she said.