The Democratic National Convention is over. Hillary Clinton is the party’s nominee. And Sanders’ presidential campaign has officially come to an end. His office is closing — movers were scheduled to remove bookshelves and file cabinets on Thursday, and the furniture was set to go Friday at noon.

“It’s all free,” Schramm told tourists and locals who stopped and inquired last week about the Sanders swag on display. “You can wallpaper your living room with it if you want.”

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Sitting behind a folding table in front of Bernie Sanders’ national headquarters on Church Street, volunteers Don Schramm and Joan Knight gave away T-shirts, campaign signs, buttons, and bumper stickers.


Still, some of Sanders’ supporters are holding on, not yet ready to fully embrace Clinton’s candidacy — as Sanders has — and relinquish the “political revolution” kick-started by the longtime US senator from Vermont’s insurgent campaign. Instead, many Sanders supporters in his home state, a liberal bastion, are considering their options.

“I might vote for Jill Stein. I think it might be more effective than writing Bernie in,” said Schramm, a member of the state’s Progressive Party. “If it were a close race between Hillary and Trump, I would vote for Hillary.”

Knight, also a member of the Progressive Party, is less conflicted: “Clinton,” she said.

Sanders, who was mayor of Burlington for eight years, represented Vermont in the House of Representatives for 16 years, and has been a US senator for nine years, trounced Clinton in the state’s March 1 primary, winning 86 percent of the vote. Despite this, political analysts in Vermont say there’s little reason to think that Clinton won’t carry the state, which the Democrat in every presidential election has won since 1988.

“Vermont is considered a safe blue state on the national level, so within the Vermont Democratic Party, our efforts will be mainly focused on our statewide and down-ballot races,” said Christina Amestoy, spokeswoman for the state party, via e-mail.


A poll last month from Vermont Public Radio and the Castleton Polling Institute showed 39 percent of Vermonters plan to vote for Clinton, 17 percent for Trump, and 26 percent for “someone else.” It’s unclear who that someone else would be: Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee, didn’t register in the poll, receiving 0 percent, and the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Gary Johnson, received 5 percent.

Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, said he thinks there’s a chance for third-party candidates to make headway in Vermont, though not enough to keep Clinton from winning the state. “In states like New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton can make an argument that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “But it’s harder in Vermont. The only question is: how high or how large will Hillary Clinton’s vote be?”

Will, Davis wondered, she garner numbers like President Obama, who won 67 percent of the vote in 2008 and 66 percent four years later, or will the results be more similar to John Kerry in 2004, who earned 58 percent of the vote?

A sign outside the campaign’s headquarters is a reminder that Sanders didn’t win the Democratic nomination. Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe/Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston

For their part, the Clinton campaign said it’s not taking anything for granted. Clinton recently hired Nick Carter, who was Sanders’ national political outreach director, as the Vermont state director and head of progressive outreach nationally. It is his job to bring more voters like Knight into the Clinton fold.


“It’s not going to happen on its own,” he said. “Supporters have to make an effort. The state party has to make an effort. The DNC has to make an effort. And the winning candidate has to make an effort. The Clinton campaign has been really open to that.”

He points to the platform adopted by the Democratic National Committee and Sanders’ support of Clinton as evidence.

Part of his current role is to ensure that inclusion continues in states Sanders won, such as Colorado, Michigan, and Iowa. In Vermont, for example, he’s integrating Clinton’s leadership committee, which organizes such things as house parties and phone banks, with Sanders’ supporters as a way to ensure that Sanders’ legacy and momentum are incorporated into Clinton’s campaign.

And while Carter says so far most Democrats have been receptive to his pitch, there are those who are not.

“I truly believe that Hillary should be in jail,” said Gwen Heaghney, 23, of Burlington. “I would much rather vote for Jill Stein. ”

And then there are those like Brett Powers, who are still deciding. Standing behind the counter of Computers for Change, a technology store that donates computers to local organizations, Powers, 34, said choosing between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump feels like “voting for the lesser of two evils.”

Powers said he will probably make a “snap decision” in the voting booth or simply won’t vote.

Vanessa Berman said she certainly understands why Sanders’ supporters, of which she counts herself one, are “very antiestablishment and anti-Hillary.” But the 36-year-old Burlington resident said electing Clinton president is “an incredible opportunity for this country. She done a lot for children, for poverty, for health care, for education — all of the things that are important to me.”


“The alternative,” she said, “is not even something that I can even think about.”

That was the general theme Wednesday morning at the state party’s Unity Rally, held the day after the statewide primary. The focus was on unifying state and local politicians but calls for national party unification to keep Trump out of the White House crept into speech after speech.

“It’s going to be a unified party,” US Senator Patrick Leahy said to rousing applause. “Together we can win.”

And while Sanders wasn’t present, his presence was with party officials and candidates — and even Carter, who addressed the crowd at the lobby of a waterfront office building — invoking his name and his candidacy.

David Zuckerman, who won the lieutenant governor primary on Tuesday, was endorsed by Sanders, a man he considers a role model. When asked after the rally if he was following Sanders’ lead and voting for Clinton, Zuckerman said: “I really respect Senator Sanders, and I feel the same way: None of us are going to tell other people how they are supposed to vote.”

But about Clinton?

“I do intend to vote for her,” he said, after being asked two more times.


Akilah Johnson can be reached at akilah.johnson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @akjohnson1922.