Thousands flock to Trump Delaware rally
A boisterous, flag-draped crowd hollered for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Delaware rally Friday, as he said his first term in office would mean the end of both manufacturing job loss and military frustration in the Middle East.
“Honestly, folks, we don’t know what we’re doing,” Trump said to thousands on the grounds of the Delaware State Fair in Harrington. “It’s making us look foolish. It’s making us look stupid. And it’s gonna change when I’m elected.”
Delaware’s primary is on Tuesday, and the 16 delegates at stake will have real influence on whether Trump can cross the finish line of 1,237 pledged delegates or whether Ted Cruz and John Kasich can hoard enough delegates to deny him an automatic win. Trump now has 845 pledged delegates, Cruz has 559 and Kasich has 148.
Four years ago, in the 2012 primary, Delaware’s GOP electorate went to the polls knowing Mitt Romney was their de facto candidate. The day after the state’s April 24 vote that year, the Republican National Committee said Romney was the presumptive nominee.
As Rob Arlett, a Sussex County Council member chairing Trump’s campaign here, put it in introducing the rally’s first speakers: “Delaware is on the map, folks!”Nothing like that is happening in 2016, and it’s possible that Trump won’t reach the magic 1,237 number and end the Cleveland convention on its first ballot.
People who took days off from work to be at Trump’s rally Friday weren’t focusing on the delegate math. They said they were there to show support for a candidate who dished out more unvarnished truth than most.
“Trump should have been our governor,” said Carrie M. Christman, a Buffalo, New York, woman who with her husband was traveling up and down the East Coast selling pro-Trump t-shirts of their own design. “This is our way of supporting him. He believes in America, as I do as an Air Force vet.”
Driving Christman’s support, she said, was consternation that a Hillary Clinton presidency would carry on efforts at gun control and other liberal aims.
“Obama has – I don’t even want to do the race card, but he has created a division in this country that we had overcome,” she said.
STORY: Delaware role grows larger in primary season
Trump, in a long talk that skipped from topic to topic, said Delaware seemed to him to have the same problems many other states do: a faltering blue-collar economy, increased dependence on food stamps and a worry that immigration and Mideast refugees were overwhelming pressures.
He did note something unique about Delaware: Its business-friendly incorporation laws, he said, had led him to establish 378 corporate entities here.
“You know what’s nice about New York?” he said, reminding the crowd he won the primary there Tuesday. “Those people know me well. You don’t know me well; you just take all my money with all the taxes. But I love Delaware.”
It’s likely no coincidence that Trump, as a GOP candidate, came to the part of Delaware where conservative voters are easiest to find. In 2012, Romney beat Obama in Kent and Sussex counties by a 10,000-vote margin.
Bernie Sanders, set to appear at a Wilmington rally Saturday, is likewise going where the state’s Democratic voters are concentrated. Obama received 86,000 more votes than Romney in New Castle County in 2012, and won the state’s electoral votes.
Gerri Cassidy, a 79-year-old retiree from Rehoboth Beach, was at the Trump rally with her husband, Frank. “I just like his style, and I know he’s self-funded,” Cassidy said. “I know he’s got an ego, so he’s really going to do what he says. And I don’t trust Cruz. In my gut, I know he’s not honest.”
The atmosphere at the fairgrounds was not that different from what you’d find at the real state fair. Vendors selling “Make America Great Again” hats and “Hillary for Prison 2016” shirts set up tables next to a long, orderly line as attendees waited for the gates to open at noon. “Build that wall! Build that wall!” chants sprang up. On the side of the arena, local food trucks served up chicken tenders, roast beef sandwiches, seasoned fries and ice cream.
Why did the crowd prefer Trump to any other candidate? Front of mind, many supporters said, were Trump’s positions on taxes, trade and immigration.
“I work for a major corporation. They’re sending all our jobs to India and building a plant in Mexico,” said Kathleen Lodge-Brannan, 57, who wore a pink Remington cap as she stood near the front of the line Friday morning. “I’ll know in six months if my job’s gonna go. I hope I hold onto it long enough to have Trump get in office so it can be saved.”
Employees at her job, she said, almost uniformly root for Trump, watching YouTube videos of his rallies on lunch breaks.
Trump’s speech was only lightly disturbed by protesters. A few times, campaign staff and police escorted sign-waving people out of the arena as the candidate continued talking. One middle-aged man held up a sign reading “Shore don’t like bigots like Donald Trump" as he was led out.
Trump criticized his GOP opponents at length, with more than one reference to “lyin’ Ted,” and said he liked his chances against Clinton in a general election.
“We will stomp on Hillary Clinton like no one’s ever done,” Trump said.
He also defended his supporters from the charge that they were angry.
“We’re not angry people. We’re reasonable people. We’re angry at what’s happening,” he said. “We’re angry at a system that doesn’t allow us to achieve anything…. It shows you how great our country is that we can be abused by incompetent politicians, terrible politicians, for so long.”
Sen. Colin Bonini, R-Dover South, a GOP candidate for governor, spoke briefly before Trump.
“if the government will get out of the way and let us chase our dreams, all of us win,” Bonini said. “Donald Trump understands this country comes from you, not from the folks in Washington, D.C.”
Staff Writers Matthew Albright and Margie Fishman contributed to this story.
Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.