Jess Aloe

Free Press Staff Writer

Sen. Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton has been a boon for Green Party presumptive nominee Dr. Jill Stein, she said Friday afternoon shortly before a campaign event in Burlington.

Since the Vermont senator stood on a stage in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Clinton on Tuesday, Stein said her campaign has seen skyrocketing social media likes and campaign donations. She's raised over a quarter million dollars since the Sanders announcement.

"That's new for us," she said.

Stein held an event at the McClure Multigenerational Center in Burlington's Old North End Friday evening, hoping to boost her support in the hometown of Sanders. Her first goal, she said, was to get on Vermont's ballot.

Stein, who has previously run for president on the Green Party ticket, said her campaign was seeing the outpouring from people who had become swept up in Sanders' campaign and were committed to seeing the political revolution continue.

"For many people, our campaign has been plan B from the start for Bernie supporters," she said.

Dan McLaughlin is one of those people. He supported Sanders in the primary, but plans to vote for Stein.

"In the state of Vermont, we have the freedom to not vote Democrat," he said. Because he feels the state will never go to Donald Trump, he feels free to vote for the candidate of his conscience.

James Haslam, whose group Rights and Democracy shares space at the McClure Multigenerational Center, agreed with McLaughlin.

"It's a different conversation if you're in one of those tight swing states," he said.

Trump would be a disaster, but he doesn't see Vermont voting for Trump. That leaves progressives in the state able to make a statement about the strong support for Sanders' message to the rest of the country. Haslam said Stein's platform lines up closely with the senator's.

Mike Gisandi, an American who came back to the country from his job in the Czech Republic to campaign for Sanders and wore a Sanders T-shirt as he sat waiting for the event to start, said he will probably vote for Stein.

"I think we need a third party," he said. "A vote for Jill is not a vote for Trump."

But he, and Sanders delegate Maria Rinaldi, said they still have hope Sanders will be the nominee coming out of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month.

"He hasn't released his delegates," Rinaldi said. She added she had struggled, emotionally, when Sanders endorsed Clinton earlier this week, but her spirits were lifted when Sanders addressed his delegates by phone.

"He said there's a lot of work we need to do for him," she said, and listed his plan to fight to get rid of the super delegate system and open the primaries.

Sanders got huge rounds of applause throughout the event. When the speakers mentioned Sanders, he got cheers from the crowd; Clinton got boos.

Stein spoke against the "politics of fear" leading people to vote for Hillary Clinton both in her speech and at an interview at the Burlington Free Press prior to the event. She called the lesser evil candidate. While she sees a difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, she said the differences are not enough.

In her last run for president in 2012, Stein received less than 1 percent of the vote. But this might be the year, she said.

"We're in a very different place in history where the majority of voters have actually rejected Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton," she said. She argued that most supporters of Clinton are more opposed to Trump than enthused about the candidate.

"I would say we're at a time of great social upheaval," she said, pointing to student debt, climate change and job insecurity.

Stein also had harsh words for the Democratic Party, saying they had a history of sidelining progressive candidates, though she said she respected Sanders' actions earlier this week.

"He's a team player. I think he's on the wrong team," she said.

This story was first posted on July 15, 2016.

Contact Jess Aloe at 802-660-1874 or jaloe@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jess_aloe