Al Baldasaro, a representative from Londonderry, New Hampshire, has attended nearly every Trump rally in the US north-east and is known as one of the most conservative – and controversial – members of the state house

On the morning of the New Hampshire primary, retired marine corps First Sgt Al Baldasaro stood outside Londonderry high school, where a steady stream of people were heading in to vote. He’d been told Donald Trump would probably make an appearance around 10, but that time had long since passed.



That day, Baldasaro felt a responsibility to introduce Trump to as many people in town as he could. As a state representative for Londonderry, he always tries to help his constituents when they ask, and people had been asking to see the candidate. As one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters in the state, he wanted his guy to shake as many hands as possible.

Baldasaro has been at nearly every rally Trump has held in the US north-east over the past year, often onstage speaking in his role as co-chairman of the candidate’s New Hampshire veterans’ coalition. When Trump announced his plan to temporarily ban non-citizen Muslims from the US, Baldasaro was in the papers defending the idea. And when Trump talked about his support for veterans in the final Republican debate before the primary, he name-checked Baldasaro in front of 13 million viewers.

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Some voters heading into the polls that primary morning stopped to rib him about his newfound fame, but others had more substantive issues on their mind. One tiny older woman made a beeline for him. She had just seen 13 hours, the fictionalized account of the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

“I just want someone held accountable,” she said.

A guy in jeans said his union wanted him to vote for Sanders, but he’s done with Democrats. The woman in the apartment above his got government housing aid, he said, but she had her boyfriend living with her, which is against the rules. And they used drugs. He has called the state, but they wouldn’t do anything.

Another voter said he didn’t want to sound racist, but he didn’t think Obama was really looking out for everyone in the country. “I think after the election we’re going to find out he’s a true Muslim,” he said.

Baldasaro agreed. “I’m pretty good at looking at certain indicators,” he said. “You know, my military training.”

Baldasaro said he hoped he was wrong, but he didn’t see why else Obama would have taken the positions he has on Israel and made a nuclear deal with Iran. “I think he’s a nice guy, but I think something’s not right,” he said.

Flirting with controversy

Like Trump, Baldasaro has a habit of saying things that shock some people. Just recently, in the midst of a Facebook debate over public nudity, Baldasaro wrote to a colleague: “No disrespect, but your nipple would be the last one I want to see.” The exchange got picked up by some national media, which Baldasaro thinks misrepresented the whole thing.

The story blew up while Baldasaro and his wife, Judy, were visiting family in Florida. Baldasaro keeps his cellphone on all the time to field constituent calls, even when he’s on vacation, and he said he started getting nasty calls and Facebook messages – even death threats. Someone edited his Wikipedia page so the first line said that he “is a chauvinist American politician”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Baldasaro on the day of the New Hampshire primary. Photograph: Livia Gershon for the Guardian

None of this is as bad as when Baldasaro led the fight against same-sex marriage in New Hampshire a few years back. Then, he and his wife said, they found broken glass all around their yard. Judy says it was people from out of town.

In town, Baldasaro has his detractors, but he has been elected as representative for five consecutive two-year terms. He seems to know practically everyone in Londonderry, a city which is right next door to a regional airport and home to the headquarters of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. It’s also 96% white.

Will Stewart, president of the local chamber of commerce, said it’s not the kind of place you might associate with populist anger.

“Taxes are going down as the commercial base is getting built up,” he said. “Things seem to be going well.”

Baldasaro is known as one of the most conservative members of New Hampshire’s huge 400-member house of representatives. But he started out life as a Democrat. His grandfather was a four-term mayor of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting in 1971. He recalls meals with Tip O’Neill and the Kennedys when he was a teenager.

“They’d sit in my grandfather’s yard and talk about how they’re for the little people, how they’re for helping people,” he said. “And I used to ask: ‘If you’re for the people, when you tax them you’re going after the little people, because big pockets don’t care.’”

Baldasaro still thought of himself as a Democrat at age 18. That’s when he joined the marines, where he would end up serving for 22 years. It was Ronald Reagan who crystalized his budding conservative sentiments a few years later, in ways he sees Trump echoing today.

“Reagan was not part of the establishment,” he said. “He was saying things other people only dreamed: rebuilding the military, having a strong country, ensuring that we’re protected in missile defense. I feel the same way today – motivated, excited about Trump.”

Having served in the marines for 22 years, Baldasaro sees security as the first priority for any president. In the 1990s, he worked securing Kuwait international airport as part of the operation that removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from the country.

“People were shaking my hand that got their freedom, but those radical Muslims turn on us in a heartbeat,” he said. “I’ll never understand this religious war. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years. We’re not going to change them.”

How to make America great again

When Trump says he wants to make America great again, what Baldasaro pictures is the years just after the second world war.

“We came out of it smelling like a rose,” he said. “People were getting educated, people were starting businesses, working. They were proud. They were buying homes.”

Like Trump, Baldasaro is no ideologue for capitalist purity. He talks less about free trade than about keeping America safe from foreign threats, and less about social spending’s impact on the deficit than its potential to demoralize its beneficiaries. He’d like to see welfare recipients enrolled in programs with local government agencies that would train them to do office work or drive trucks. He is also incensed at the way pundits and politicians describe Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits as “entitlements”.

“That’s BS,” he said. “That’s people’s money. They’ve paid into that program.”

Baldasaro spends a lot of time helping his constituents navigate government programs, applying for disability benefits. New Hampshire state representatives make only $100 a year, but he takes the job seriously.

“People call him in the middle of the night and he’ll go out at 10 at night, go help somebody,” his wife, Judy, said.

People call him in the middle of the night and he’ll go out at 10 at night, go help somebody Judy Baldasaro

Baldasaro said he wanted to make a difference for other people, partly because he has gone through his own hard times. He broke his pelvis in two places and has had a heart attack, cancer, and other illnesses and injuries brought on by his military service.

“I’m a disabled veteran, but I keep myself active so instead of sitting home feeling bad for myself – you know what I mean: ‘Why me?’ With my issues, I can understand what the other people are going through.”

By the same token, he holds people to a certain standard. He and Judy help out with a Toys for Tots drive, and he thinks some people take advantage of the program. “I told this one lady this year: ‘Enough is enough. Three, four years I’ve been helping you. Now you’re abusing the system,’” he said. “Some of these people during Christmas are going to two, three, four different organizations. It’s designed to help the people in need, and abusers really screw it up.”

The Muslim question

Baldasaro takes pride in responding to all sorts of requests from his constituents. That’s how he and Judy wound up at a busy diner on a Saturday morning a few weeks before the primary, sitting down for breakfast with a 21-year-old medical student named Ayman Usmani.

Usmani grew up in Londonderry, the son of two doctors from Pakistan. He was the only Muslim in his high school class, but he said he never felt like an outsider. He was president of his senior class. Since Trump has been in the news talking about banning foreign Muslims, Usmani said he has felt different. It bothers him that, under that proposal, his parents never would have been able to move to the country, and his grandmother, who still lives in Pakistan, wouldn’t be able to visit.

They talked and talked. Usmani repeatedly thanked Baldasaro for his military service. Baldasaro said he was sorry if Usmani’s family felt singled out by the way he and Trump talk about all this, but the really crucial thing is that drawing attention to the dangers posed by radical Muslims could protect Americans. If 20 people were coming to dinner at your house and you knew one of them wanted you dead, he asked, would you let them in?

After an hour and a half, with other patrons standing at the entrance waiting for a table, Usmani just wanted to say one more thing.

“When things like this come up, I just want you to consider my family’s perspective,” he said.

“I do, I do,” Baldasaro said. “And I also consider those families that were slaughtered.”

Trump never did show up in Londonderry on the day of the primary, but his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, and their wives came by in the afternoon. And later that night, Baldasaro took the stage at his election night party.

“It was awesome,” he said afterward. “I think our hard work paid off.”

A few days later, he traveled to South Carolina to talk with veterans there about Trump.