[D]arcie Johnston said she knew in January that Donald Trump would win.
That was when the Republican presidential nominee blustered into Burlington, Bernie Sanders’ backyard, and drew a line of supporters and the curious who wrapped around the block of the Flynn Theater, as well as a crowd of hundreds across the street in City Hall Park chanting in opposition.
What sold Johnston, the veteran Vermont Republican political strategist said, was Trump’s chutzpah.
“It was about his willingness to come into what was clearly an unfriendly or certainly unknown type of venue and audience in the belly of the beast of Bernie Sanders’ hometown, and I just thought the candidate that has the courage to do that was going to have a real shot at winning. From that point forward, I thought he was going to do it,” the veteran Republican political operative said.
Johnston grabbed the title of Vermont state director for the Trump campaign, but her real job was to help Trump in the general election try to win New Hampshire, the closest swing state, a strategy the campaign followed in states that were foregone conclusions, either way, like Vermont. She organized volunteers and together they traveled to the Granite State the past five weekends going door-to-door trying to put Trump over the top.
“What the polls were saying was not what people were telling me,” said Johnston. They said “we need change, we need to vote for Trump, we need to drain the swamp. They were repeating the lines of Donald Trump. It was young. It was old … the momentum was there, the enthusiasm was there. We also didn’t see any Clinton people.”
Clinton eked out a victory of 47.5 to 47.3 percent in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Two days before, the New York Times yawned that Clinton had a 79 percent chance of winning the state. (They also gave her a 88 percent chance of winning the race on Nov. 9th.)
In this edition of Digger Dialogue, Johnston, perhaps best known in Vermont for fighting against Gov. Peter Shumlin’s attempts at single payer health care reform, said she is telling her liberal friends: “Give him a chance.”
Regarding Trump’s controversial statements on the campaign trail, Johnston said they were “shock and awe” to stand out from the crowded field.
“You know, the American public has a very short attention span and with 16 or 17 candidates running, there had to be some shock and awe to get through the process and I think that’s what Trump was doing,” she said. “He knew what he had to do to become the nominee and he was going to do it. The entertainment value and experience he has, he knows how to engage the American public.”
Johnston said, for example, she doesn’t know whether Trump will follow through on his assertion to build a wall on the Mexican border. She does, however, believe he will push a Republican-majority Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She says a possible replacement could be insurance for catastrophic care with patients making direct payments to doctors. Johnston runs an organization Vermonters for Health Care Freedom.
Johnston, who worked for Sen. James Jeffords and also ran Republican Randy Brock’s 2012 losing gubernatorial bid, said she will be seeking a job with Trump, hopefully on health care reform. One of the key efforts she made in the campaign was coordinating the election of a pro-Trump slate of delegates to go the national convention.
“I was shocked that that actually worked,” Johnston said.
Gov.-elect Phil Scott did not support Trump for president, but Johnston said she doesn’t believe Vermont will suffer. Scott said Thursday he was ready to work with the president-elect.
The biggest difference for Vermont as a result of Trump and Scott winning, she said, was the greater possibility for jobs and opportunities.
“We’re going to have an economy that grows,” she said.
Will Vermonters that oppose Trump be able to give him a chance? Johnston said millennials who oppose Trump have been privileged and may need a taste of defeat to grow.
“Millennials, they’ve never lost anything and this might be a really good thing for them in the long run,” she said. “You have to learn how to lose and pick yourself up.”
“These are people who have gotten a trophy for just showing up and tying their shoe or whatever,” Johnston said. “You win, you gotta learn to lose and you gotta hang in there.”
What was it that the political establishment, the polls and the pundits missed?
“They missed the simplicity of Donald Trump’s message. It was about securing the border. It was about security for Americans. It was about prosperity for Americans, and it was about the Supreme Court,” she said. “Those were simple messages. They missed the simplicity of his message that related to how Americans were feeling.”
