In a bid to corral the anti-Trump resistance, Bernie Sanders, AOC visit
red states
[April 16, 2025]
By JONATHAN J. COOPER and REBECCA BOONE
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.”
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Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., holds hands with Sen. Bernie
Sanders, I-Vt., during a "Fighting Oligarchy" event at the Ford
Idaho Center in Nampa, Idaho, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Kyle
Green)
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.
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