Former President Donald Trump has scheduled a rally on Dec. 16 in one of the bluest towns in New England, and a social media post suggests that local Democrats may be looking to sabotage the event.
The front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024 is making a stop in Durham, New Hampshire, home to the University of New Hampshire (UNH) where students in 2016 marched to protest his election.
In the 2020 presidential election, 76 percent of Durham residents voted for Joe Biden, compared with 21 percent for President Trump.
Durham, NH Democrats, the official Facebook page of the Durham, New Hampshire Democrats, posted an announcement that President Trump will be appearing on the UNH campus. It asks people to share a link and “sign up for tickets (2 allowed per cell number),” followed by “ ... but if many of us sign up and don’t attend, that will be our tiny way of protesting.”
The post ends with a suggestion: “...you can always sign up with a fun name like”Nevera Gain"...)
The message was reposted on the New Hampshire House Democratic Caucus Facebook page.
Neither organization responded to inquiries from The Epoch Times about the post.President Trump’s New Hampshire senior campaign adviser Stephen Stepanek told The Epoch Times that given the anticipated size of the crowd, the efforts by Democrats to buy up seats will “hardly make any difference.”
UNH police did not return calls from The Epoch Times asking about any potential concerns about the event.
UNH Police Chief Paul Dean told seacoastonline.com on Dec. 12 that his department is taking a similar approach to President Trump’s visit that it took when former President Barack Obama spoke in 2016 at a campaign rally for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He drew a crowd of 7.600.
Anyone who has witnessed a Trump rally can attest to its rock-concert-size crowds with supporters dressed in Trump garb or wrapped in American flags. The party atmosphere, with vendors lining nearby streets, is very different than the small town-hall-style campaign appearances of GOP competitors like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Chris Ager, Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, told The Epoch Times that any interference planned by Democrats against President Trump’s rally in Durham would be disappointing.
“Deception like that is not the New Hampshire way. We need a free flow of ideas and political speech, not childish games,” he said.
Like former President Obama, President Trump will use UNH’s sizable Whittemore Center Arena. The complex, according to its website, has a seating capacity of 7,381 for “concert-style events and 6,501 for hockey and basketball events.”
Except for a community college in nearby Portsmouth, UNH, with a little over 15,000 students, is the only college in the seacoast area.
With New Hampshire’s status as an open primary state to unaffiliated voters, college students in the Live Free or Die state could potentially register and vote in the upcoming primaries, provided they can prove residency here.
The UNH Survey Center, which tracks voter trends, at the beginning of the year released a poll showing that two-thirds of New Hampshire Democrats did not want President Biden to seek reelection.
Despite the poll showings, last month, the entire New Hampshire Democratic caucus launched a write-in campaign for the president in the New Hampshire primaries. President Biden, who was unsuccessful in bumping New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status behind his more favorable state of South Carolina, then announced he wouldn’t be on the ballot for the party nomination.
On Thursday, the group held a press conference in Concord to promote the campaign and appeal to absentee voters to write in President Biden on their mail-in ballot.
Republicans and other critics quickly took to social media like X, formerly Twitter, to poke fun at the group for displaying a giant sample primary ballot, propping it up on an easel, and giving precise instructions on how to fill in a bubble at the bottom of the ballot and write in the president’s name.
Former NH Democratic party leader Kathleen Sullivan, also a former chair of the national Democratic convention, posted on Facebook, “Every time NH Republicans tell Democrats not to write in Joe Biden, another Democrat gets their wings - and circles 1/23 on their calendar to #writeinBiden.”
Ms. Sullivan was among the most vocal critics against the DNC and President Biden for trying to upset New Hampshire’s more than 100-year-old standing as holding the first presidential primary in the United States.
President Trump is expected to speak at 2 p.m. in Durham tomorrow.
