Donald Trump Finds Fertile Ground North of Maine’s ‘Volvo Line’

BANGOR, Maine — Most Trump rallies seem to generate both controversy and a kind of circus atmosphere, and the one in Bangor on Wednesday was no exception.

Trump flew into this city of 33,000 people—third largest in Maine—in the hope of earning at least one electoral college vote, which he could achieve by winning the state’s 2nd Congressional District since Maine is one of a few states without a winner-take-all system of allotting electors.

The district—north of the “Volvo Line” as one warm-up speaker put it—is less prosperous than the southern part of the state where Portland, Lewiston and various coastal towns are engines of economic activity. The south usually votes for Democrats, while the North is more conservative and is now represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by Bruce Poliquin , a Republican.

It’s north of the Volvo Line where the decline of the paper industry has had particularly acute impacts on communities like in Bucksport , where 572 workers were laid off in 2014, and in Millinocket , where there are ongoing disputes over the future of the North Woods and whether it should be designated as a national monument or park , as Route Fifty has previously reported.

Trump was scheduled to speak in Bangor at 4 p.m., and when I arrived with three friends about an hour earlier, the big Cross Insurance Center arena was about half full. A black-clad, tough-looking Secret Service agent wanded me after I’d set off a metal detector at the entrance. But the crowd looked peaceful, and just a handful of protesters showed up outside the arena. Their signs protested “racism” in the Trump campaign.

My group was struck by the composition of the crowd—which seemed much younger than the stereotypical Trump base of angry, over-50 white men. Many families showed up, some with teenage children and others with babes in arms. I sat next to a young lobsterman, whose self-employed status allowed him to take the day off to attend the rally. He was a committed Trump voter. The crowd was gathering toward the end of the work day, and people trickled in as the event progressed, filling most of the big arena. We estimated the crowd at about 5,000 people.

For readers of the state and local political tea leaves, the warm-up phase of the rally was as interesting as Trump himself. It featured various colorful and notorious characters leading up to the final introduction of the candidate by Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage .

The Christian invocation was delivered by a muscular pastor, Ken Graves, who worked as a lumberjack for nine years after founding Calvary Chapel near Bangor. He presides over an evangelical congregation of about 1,200, one of Maine’s largest and also preaches on a radio station, WJCX / 99.5 FM ,  he founded 20 years ago. In 2009, he made news with anti-LGBT commentary . And his invocation ranged from religious to political, as he warned against “the tyranny of the few” and counseled the crowd to stay calm in the face of “that which is outrageous.”

Next up, to lead the pledge of allegiance, were the Freeport Flag Ladies , who have been celebrated by many for their ceaseless efforts to keep the horrors of 9/11 in the public eye, and to support the American troops who fought the wars that ensued.

The Flag Ladies, who wear red, white and blue at all their events, have received flags flown over the U.S. Capitol and on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Tuesday morning, they stand at an intersection in Freeport, and they also make the long drive to Bangor Airport to welcome troops coming home. Their 15-year vigil has drawn protests against what a few critics see as a pro-military agenda. A suit they filed against people they said were harassing them was dismissed by a local judge in January .

The ladies were followed at the podium by a retired Marine Corps first sergeant from New Hampshire who forcefully pledged that Trump would “make sure that our veterans benefits are not touched,” and take better care of women veterans. The candidate, he continued, would “damn well make sure that our elderly are taken care of” by “not touching social security or medicare.” The sergeant also said Trump knew that “we got no business in Syria, fighting their war.”

The crowd chanted “Trump, Trump, Trump” in reaction to the next speaker’s assertion that the candidate would protect their jobs, “save that factory,” in contrast to the “global elite” and the “Hillary elite” that have supported free-trade agreements of the past. This warm-up was delivered by Trump’s policy director, Stephen Miller, himself a controversial character .

Better-known than any of the preceding speakers, and perhaps even than LePage, was next up on the podium: Howie Carr, whose website boasts that he is “New England’s undisputed talk radio king.”

The Boston-based conservative talker got off the “great to be north of the Volvo Line” quip, and excited the crowd with a ringing defense of the Second Amendment, citing a recent incident where two men, carrying handguns, had intervened in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot in Augusta.

“They were carrying equalizers, carrying the Roscoes ,” said Carr. He said the men had declined a chance to appear with Trump on the rostrum in Bangor. They couldn’t take time off from their jobs, he said—contrasting them with the large number of protesters that often appear at Trump rallies.

Carr got himself in hot water when he brought up U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “You know Elizabeth Warren, right? Woo, woo, woo,” he chanted in an imitation of old movies’ depiction of American Indians’ war whoops. Warren, of course, has been the subject of ridicule for her claims of Native American heritage while seeking  academic advancement, and Trump regularly labels her “Pocahontas.”

Carr’s statement fed into the narrative of Trump’s “racism.”

LePage, last up before Trump, talked of his record of dealing with budget deficits and pension liability problems he had inherited, said he’d helped grow Maine’s liquor business from $10 million to $50 million, and boasted the “welfare to work” program he has promoted.

He predicted that Trump would improve the economy—including the prospects of his own wife, who recently took a job waiting tables in scenic Boothbay Harbor.

Ann LePage’s income from her job at McSeagull’s restaurant is supplementing the governor’s $70,000 salary, the lowest in the nation.

LePage was the only prominent Maine politician at the rally; neither Poliquin nor Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins chose to attend. Neither has yet endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee.

Trump’s own speech lasted about 50 minutes. He began by railing against the media for “never” showing television viewers the crowds at his rallies, and later called them “the most dishonest people” for turning cameras away from the podium only to follow the occasional protester being led away by security personnel.

The speech centered around creating more and better jobs in the United States. Federal government numbers vastly understate unemployment and underemployment in the nation, he said. He railed against China’s devaluations of its currency, saying they were costing Americans jobs. He railed against “crooked Hillary,” protesting ads her campaign has produced showing him apparently playing golf during his recent trip to Scotland— when he never swung a club . He worked his way through a seven point program of correcting U.S. foreign trade problems. He promised to end the Common Core education standard, to repeal and replace Obamacare, to protect the Second Amendment.

“We’re going to bring back our jobs. We’re going to bring back our wealth. We’re going to bring back our money,” he said. “We’re going to bring back our pride. We’re going to make America great again.”

The crowd was enthusiastic. They cheered about the Second Amendment, they chanted “Trump, Trump, Trump,” waving placards they’d been given on the way in, they jeered when someone shouted “Hillary for Prison,” and they crowded down on the floor, in front of the podium, eager to get close to the candidate and to get his autograph once he had finished speaking.

The scene outside the arena after the event was itself something of a spectacle. A young woman with heavily tattooed arms was modeling one of the tee shirts vendors were hawking—this one depicting Hillary and Monica Lewinsky on the front and saying, on the back, “Trump That Bitch.” It seemed ironic that the vendors of this and other paraphernalia were African-American, for while I’d spotted no black faces in the arena, here they were, practicing good old American capitalism of the kind Trump promotes, in the wake of the event. A white entrepreneur we encountered in the parking lot showed us shirts he’d produced with Trump on the $20 bill—a better replacement for Andrew Jackson, he said than would be the abolitionist Harriet Tubman . The Trump twenty, he said, would be a “workingman’s” bill.

The question is whether Trump, who trumpets himself as a champion of the workingman can, if elected, actually bring back those jobs north of the Volvo Line and in economically challenged places like them around the nation like he says he can.

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