[B]ARRE — Vermont Democrats held a day of celebration Sunday for home state hero Bernie Sanders and all he has accomplished in his quest for the presidency.
“We did not know whether he was going to turn out to be Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream, that everyone could understand and appreciate, or whether he was going to be a maple creemee — you know, beloved at home but unknown beyond the border,” said environmentalist Bill McKibben, a vocal supporter and early surrogate of Sanders.
“We have the answer to that question now,” McKibben continued in front of a boisterous crowd in the Barre Opera House. “There has been a love affair across this nation with our junior senator. It has been an amazing thing to watch.”
There were “Bernie” shirts, stickers, cookies and catchphrases on display here at the party’s state convention, where 408 delegates cast ballots for 11 of the 16 pledged delegates who will support Sanders at the national party convention in Philadelphia this summer.
A total of 26 Vermont delegates have been allotted, including 10 so-called superdelegates.
Six of the 10 superdelegates have backed Sanders, giving the Vermont senator a total of 22 national delegates from Vermont going into the convention. The final delegate number is representative of his 86 percent blowout win in the Green Mountain State primary.
Besides electing national delegates, the convention voters unanimously passed a resolution calling for national party rule changes that would force superdelegates to follow the will of the primary voters in future elections.
Should the national party not adopt Vermont’s proposed rule, the Vermont Democratic Party pledged to amend its own rules in 2020, promising to allocate their own delegates so as to attempt to match the primary results.
A separate resolution also unanimously passed, making official the delegation’s endorsement of Sanders for president.
While there was much talk of national politics at the state convention, lacking entirely was any mention of Hillary Clinton, the all-but-official standard-bearer for her party in this general election.
One of Clinton’s few prominent political supporters in the state, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, was not at the convention.
As a superdelegate who backs the former secretary of state, Leahy has faced some heat from Vermonters. The senior senator had a scheduling conflict Sunday — he attended the University of Vermont graduation ceremony to present an honorary degree to longtime friend and adviser Paul Bruhn.
State Director John Tracy read a statement on behalf of his boss at the party convention. “Thanks to Bernie, our small state has played an outsize role in driving the debate and focusing on issues that should be front and center for every leader,” Leahy wrote.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, another Clinton supporter, who also attended the UVM graduation wasn’t present at the convention.
Virtually every statewide candidate made reference to Sanders in their remarks. State Sen. David Zuckerman, who is running for lieutenant governor, recalled volunteer work for Sanders in 1992. The Chittenden senator’s opponent, Rep. Kesha Ram, of Burlington, remembered introducing Barack Obama at a campaign event during Sanders’ contentious 2006 Senate race.
The three Democratic gubernatorial candidates — Peter Galbraith, Sue Minter and Matt Dunne — also looked to align themselves with Sanders’ movement.
All three have sworn off corporate contributions, called for a boost in the minimum wage and endorsed Sanders for president.
“Let us now bring that revolution to Vermont,” Galbraith said. “Let’s elect a governor committed to economic justice and fighting inequality. Let’s elect a governor who will overturn a Montpelier culture where the special interest triumphs too often over the broader public interest.”
Minter thanked Sanders for “spreading Vermont values across the whole United States,” and Dunne said that “Bernie’s fight is our fight.”
There were few policy differences between the gubernatorial candidates Saturday, though Galbraith called for an end to special interest tax breaks, while Minter promised to fight the National Rifle Association aggressively.
“You can be darn sure I’m going to be a leader who fights for women’s economic security, who fights to end the epidemic of domestic violence, who stands up to the NRA and fights for gun safety,” she said.
All three Democrats are beginning to amp up the rhetoric and add to their travel schedules ahead of the Democratic primary Aug. 9.
A three-person delegation from the Vermont Democratic Party visited Philadelphia over the past few days to discuss the national convention.
Tim Jerman, the state party’s vice chair, said he had attended a crucial meeting between Sanders and Clinton staffers. Among the Sanders crew was Nick Carter, the superdelegate wrangler, and Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, who hails from Sharon.
“There’s going to be a lot of contention between now and the convention,” Jerman predicted. “But the message was about unity. Both campaigns understand very strongly that they can’t win without the other’s supporters.”
Jerman then ticked off a number of organizing statistics the Sanders campaign shared at the Philadelphia meeting.
Among them: The Sanders campaign has made 65 million phone calls and knocked on 5 million doors. More than 1.2 million people have attended Sanders rallies, and 13,000 voter registration events have occurred. In California alone, 1.4 million new voters have been registered since January.
Jerman said that between Clinton and Sanders, 66 percent of the youth vote is locked up, and that those numbers could be pivotal in swinging a number of states to the blue corner in the general election.
Although Sanders was the talk of the convention, he was traveling the West Coast for the weekend, drawing big crowds in California and visiting the U.S.-Mexico border.
The senator did record a short video thanking Vermonters for all their support.
“Vermont today is looked upon as one of the great progressive states in this country in so many ways, and you have made that happen — all of you have,” Sanders said to wild applause. “So thank you so much for your support, and I hope to be home soon and see you all.”