[K]EENE, N.H. — The Vermonters who drove 15 miles from the Green Mountain State border to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ rally here Sunday came to see him on a presidential stage.
And to see him, period.
“I’m really excited for the opportunity to see him come back to the area,” said Megan Harris, 28, of Bellows Falls.
Sanders has represented Vermont in the Senate since 2007, having served in the U.S. House since 1991. History’s longest-elected independent member of Congress once was known for holding big-issue constituent meetings in small towns. But since he began his first White House bid in 2015, he’s more often in Washington, D.C., or one of the 45 other states he has visited.
(Sanders has yet to campaign in Arkansas, Alaska, Hawaii and Tennessee.)
Sanders officially announced his 2016 run in Burlington, where he began his political career as mayor four decades ago. He had hoped to hold a similar launch there last month, only to see winter weather force a switch to his birthplace of Brooklyn, where he spent $70,000 to rent his old school for a kickoff rally.
Sanders still is aiming to hold a public event in Burlington, where he also plans on opening a campaign office to supplement his current one in the nation’s capital.
“Co-locating our headquarters in Vermont and Washington, D.C., allows us to attract the most talented staff and maximize travel efficiency,” senior adviser Jeff Weaver told Politico.
But until the campaign finalizes its plans for Vermont’s largest city, constituents found two Sunday speeches in neighboring New Hampshire to be the closest way to see him. A noon event in Concord received live C-Span.org coverage, while a later program in Keene drew regional reporters, including several who find it challenging to cover him back home.
Paul Heintz, a staff writer and political editor for Seven Days, recently wrote a Washington Post opinion piece in which he noted Sanders often refuses to speak to his Burlington-based weekly, as well as fellow statewide news sources VTDigger and Vermont Public Radio, even though the three are locally owned and operated rather than large corporate outfits the democratic socialist frequently rails against.
The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, for its part, made national news earlier this year when it published an editorial urging Sanders not to run for president.
“We have repeatedly hit the senator on where his loyalties lay: Vermont or a bigger calling?” it said in part. “In his previous run for the presidency, Sanders, an independent who ran for the White House as a Democrat, missed dozens of votes that likely would have helped Vermonters. … While he makes regular visits ‘home,’ you are more likely to catch Sanders on Colbert, CNN or MSNBC than you are to see him talking to reporters here in Vermont. Evidently, microphones here don’t extend far enough.”
But none of that mattered to Sanders’ Vermont supporters in Keene’s nearly 900-seat Colonial Theatre. Tosha Tillman, 37, of Guilford used to live outside of Washington, D.C., but missed Sanders at public events scheduled there.
“I said there’s no way I’m missing him here,” she said in a green T-shirt with a map of Vermont.
Tillman isn’t concerned by Sanders’ cross-country travels.
“It’s part of the job application process,” she said. “He understands his own capacity — he’s done this once before.”
Harris, for her part, believes enough in Sanders’ candidacy to drive behind a sluggish plow truck Sunday so she could take to the stage in a Bernie T-shirt and action figure in her pocket.
“I would travel 100 miles to see him,” she said. “I’m excited to see his message is now in the mainstream. It’s always worth it to have an opportunity to hear it.”
