Progressives head to red states seeking to drive enthusiasm in Trump strongholds
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Stephanie and Ryan Burnett were perplexed. The crowd was enormous. The line snaked endlessly between buildings. Were they in the right place?
As the mother and son approached an aging college basketball arena in Salt Lake City, the mass of people seemed way too big for the Bernie Sanders rally they were planning to attend in one of the most conservative states in the country.
“We’re not used to that in a place like Utah,” said Ryan, a 28-year-old server and retail manager from South Weber, about 20 miles north of the arena.
Sanders, alongside his fellow progressive champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, took his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour deep into Trump territory this week and drew the same types of large crowds they got in liberal and battleground states.
Outside Boise on Monday, the Ford Idaho Center arena was filled to capacity, with staff forced to close the doors after admitting 12,500 people. There are just 11,902 registered Democratic Party voters in Canyon County, where the arena is located, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office.
While Utah, Idaho and Montana will almost certainly remain Republican strongholds for the near future, the events offer a glimpse of widespread Democratic anger over the direction of President Donald Trump’s administration and a dose of hope to progressives living in the places where they’re most outnumbered.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are among a cadre of Trump critics venturing into potentially hostile territory as Democrats are thinking about how to reverse their fortunes in next year’s midterms and the following presidential election. Ocasio-Cortez, 35, is seen as a potential successor to Sanders’ mantle — the 83-year-old Vermont senator jokingly called her his “daughter” in Salt Lake City — and a contender for the Democratic nomination in 2028.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee last year, toured Ohio last week to better understand working-class voters in a state that has moved sharply to the right after backing Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, also went to Ohio, hoping to put a spotlight on Vice President JD Vance in Cleveland.
“Democrats have got to make a fundamental choice,” Sanders told The Associated Press after his Salt Lake City rally that filled the 15,000-seat University of Utah basketball arena, with thousands more unable to get in. “Do they want these folks to be in the Democratic Party, or do they want to be funded by billionaires?”
Trump won Utah 60% to 38% and Idaho 67% to 30%. Neither state sends any Democrats to Congress. Republicans control all of the statewide offices and dominate the legislatures.
“Utah, I know that it can look or feel impossible sometimes out here for the Republicans to be defeated, but that is not true,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Then she evoked her own improbable victory over a powerful member of the Democratic leadership in a 2018 primary: “From the waitress who is now speaking to you today, I can tell you: impossible is nothing.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little mocked progressive ambitions on Monday, the day Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rallied outside Boise. Little posted on his X account a famous meme of Sanders in a winter coat with the caption: “I am once again asking for you to not bring your failed policies to Idaho.”
Pockets of Salt Lake City and Boise have strong counter-culture scenes; but elsewhere, being liberal can be isolating.
“Being progressive in a place like this, people are almost masked or something, kind of seem like the quiet minority,” Ryan Burnett said as he waited to enter the Utah rally. “But this is a space where it’s the opposite of that. This kind of event is especially meaningful right now.”
His mother, a 52-year-old caregiver with an online reselling business, said it was refreshing to be around like-minded people. She’s feeling increasingly like an “outcast” at her congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where the parking lot is filled with Trump bumper stickers.
“I went to our church this morning. I’m coming to this now because I feel more accepted here,” Stephanie Burnett said.
Democrats need to project a kinder, less judgmental image to make progress in red America, said Owen Reeder, 63, an accountant from Bountiful, Utah.
“You’re never going to make a friend by lecturing and pounding somebody on the head with a sledgehammer,” Reeder said. “You’ve got to be nice to everybody.”
Meghan Nadoroff, 36, and their mother, Kathy Franckiewicz, 59, went to the Idaho event Monday. They both live in in the small farming community of Kuna about 17 miles southwest of Boise.
They’ve felt disenfranchised by both parties – bullied by some of the far-right policies of the Idaho’s GOP supermajority, and ignored by the national Democratic Party because Idaho has been written off as a lost cause, said Franckiewicz.
“We have so little presence in Idaho overall,” Nadoroff said of Democrats. “It’s easy to just kind of give up, politically.”
In what feels to many Democrats like dark times, hope and camaraderie are especially valuable.
“It feels safe, to know that there are more of us out there and we’re not just a blue dot in a red state,” said Jaxon Pond, 20, of Meridian, Idaho.
That’s a sharp contrast to everyday life, Pond said.
“Especially as a gay man, I feel like I have to walk on extra eggshells about what I say because Idaho’s not necessarily the safest place to be gay,” he said.
___
Boone reported from Nampa, Idaho.