THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, September 7 - 8, 2019 |A
On the Road
With Trump’s
Diehards
The president’s most devoted fans will
travel far to attend his campaign ralliesPOLITICS
attempt to lower expectations.
Yet Mr. Biden’s lead has
been consistent for four
months, continued in polls
released this week, and is
nearly identical to the one
then candidate Donald
Trump enjoyed at this point
in a similarly crowded Re-
publican field four years ago.
“I don’t think anyone can,
on the one hand, point to a
lot of significant positive
events that have happened
for Biden since he an-
nounced, and he’s had some
stumbles,” says Doug Sosnik,
who was political director
for President Clinton. “On
the other hand, his numbers
haven’t moved in the polls.
At least up until now, he’s
proven quite durable.”the campaign has now
reached a point at which the
lead that Mr. Biden enjoys in
the polls can’t be dismissed
as simply an early-days
fluke.
From the time Mr. Biden
joined the race in April,
skeptics have viewed his
lead as perishable, an out-
growth of his nearly univer-
sal name recognition, or sim-
ply residual feelings of
fondness for him personally.
Ironically, the sense that
Mr. Biden is a vulnerable
front-runner was fueled in re-
cent days by his own cam-
paign advisers, who told re-
porters it isn’t essential that
he win in Iowa and New
Hampshire next year, which
sounded an awful lot like anDemocratic field—19 candi-
dates in all—is pivoting to a
weekend Democratic Party
convention in New Hamp-
shire, home of the first-in-
the-nation primary.
The realities of this new
phase will become even
clearer next week, when
Democrats meet for a debate
in Texas that, for the first
time, will be limited to the
top 10 candidates, and will
bring together on the same
stage the top three contend-
ers, former Vice President
Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and Sen. Bernie
Sanders. For those candi-
dates not on the stage, the
struggle to remain viable will
get markedly more difficult.
Perhaps most important,For Democrats aspiring to
be president, the warm-up
lap just ended.
As Campaign 2020 moved
past the Labor Day milepost
this week, that sound you
could hear
around the
country was
candidate en-
gines kicking
into high gear.
Travel to
Iowa, home of the inaugural
primary caucuses, intensi-
fied. The top tier of candi-
dates spent a combined,
mind-numbing seven hours
at a nationally televised CNN
town hall on climate change.
Now, virtually the entireObamacare, not pay the fine.
And what happened? Noth-
ing. Before, the quiet me
would have paid the fine.
But Donald Trump told me
that we have a voice, and
now I stand up for myself.”
The Trump rally die-
hards—a few dozen men and
women who have been to
more than 10 rallies—are al-
most exclusively white. Many
are recently retired with
time on their hands and lit-
tle to keep them tied to
home. A handful never had
children. Others are es-
tranged from their families.
Several of those with jobs
live paycheck to paycheck,
but constantly offer strangers
a cold beverage, sandwiches
or their last cigarette.
Some rely on disability
payments, like Cynthia Bar-
ten, or cut lawns in Missouri,
like her husband, Ken Bar-
ten. Others sell secondhand
items in Kentucky like Jon
French, or find odd jobs such
as clearing rocks from farm-
land in Minnesota, like Ran-
dal Thom. Kevin Steele quit
his job and plans to finance
his travels to Trump rallies
with the remaining $120,
from an inheritance.
The group includes Trump
aficionados, who have spent
decades keeping tabs on his
history of political flirta-
tions, tabloid melodrama and
star turns on reality televi-
sion. A surprising number
voted for Barack Obama at
least once, caught up in the
Democrat’s charisma and fed
up with Republicans over
foreign adventurism and
growing national debt.
Rally regulars stay con-
nected through Facebook
and text messages, pinging
one another to see who is at-
tending the next rally, who
can carpool and who wants
to split a hotel room.
Ms. DePiero broke up a
700-mile drive to the Cincin-
nati rally on Aug. 1 by
spending the night with
Becky Gee, a northeast Ohio
dairy farmer she met at a
previous Trump rally. She
stayed with Barbara Bien-
kowski in Maryland (they
met at Trump Hotel in
Washington earlier this
year), on her way to the
Greenville, N.C., rally on July17 and stayed in Myrtle
Beach, S.C., with Dale Ran-
ney, another Front Row Joe,
on the way home.
Two regular rallygoers
have already married, and
divorced.
All of them describe, in
different ways, a euphoric
flow of emotions between
themselves and the presi-
dent, a sort of adrenaline-
fueled, psychic cleansing
that follows 90 minutes of
chanting and cheering with
15,000 other like-minded
Trump junkies.
“Once you start going, it’s
kind of like an addiction,
honestly,” said April Owens,
a 49-year-old financial man-
ager in Kingsport, Tenn.,
who has been to 11 rallies. “I
love the energy. I wouldn’t
stand in line for 26 hours to
see any rock band. He’s the
only person I would do this
for, and I’ll be here as many
times as I can.”
For many Front Row Joes,
the Trump era marks their
political awakening. Among
the first Americans to iden-
tify the resonance and endur-
ance of Mr. Trump’s political
appeal, they are reveling in
the victory. Like Mr. Trump
on stage, each recounts the
Election Night triumph with-
out any prompting.chant erupted as Mr. Trump
was criticizing Rep. Ilhan
Omar (D., Minn.). Three days
earlier, Mr. Trump had
tweeted that Ms. Omar and
three other liberal congress-
women, all women of color,
should “go back” to unspeci-
fied countries. The four
women are American citi-
zens and three of them were
born in the U.S.
Before the rally, more than
a dozen supporters said they
would never use that racist
language to denounce minori-
ties. Inside Williams Arena,
many participated in the
chant that mirrored it. “It
was like a tornado when ‘send
her back’ started. I was look-
ing around and people were
loving it,” Ms. DePiero said.
The regulars who arrived
early at rallies—often before
campaign officials or local
law enforcement—hurried to
set up tents and organize
their belongings. The Bar-
tens, who drove their Dodge
minivan seven hours from
St. Louis to be first in line in
Cincinnati, unfolded a table
and set down a deep-cycle
military battery, a camp
stove for turkey melts, a
string of LED festoon lights
and a half-empty pack of
Edgefield cigarettes.
They mingled until doorsopened, then rushed to the
front row on the arena floor.
But not necessarily center-
stage.
Some, like, Shane Doyle,
prefer the side where Mr.
Trump first appears from
behind the curtains. “Back in
the primary, I used to like
being the first one when he
came out, because he would
sign all my stuff,” said Mr.
Doyle, a 24-year-old machin-
ist from Buffalo, N.Y.
Just before midnight on
the eve of the Cincinnati
rally, about two dozen fans
lounged in lawn chairs or
leaned on metal bike racks,
scrolling through their
phones and sipping from
cans of Coors Light.
A soft brown blanket cov-
ered Ms. Barten and her 12-
year-old granddaughter, who
slept sitting up in her camp
chair.
The 57-year-old Air Force
veteran’s disability check is
reduced by $5 every month
by an automatic donation to
the Trump campaign.
“We’re not rich by any
means,” Ms. Barten said. “But
I’ll tell you what: When we’re
rich in our hearts with our
country and our president,
we’re richer than anybody.”
—Elisa Cho
contributed to this article.In Orlando, Trump fans
sat in a field adjacent to Am-
way Center in June, about to
get soaked by the second
downpour in as many days.
Still, they wore sunglasses
and smiles as outdoor speak-
ers pumped out “Sweet
Home Alabama” and “Hurts
So Good.” Head shakes and
patronizing laughs greeted
questions about which Dem-
ocrat might beat Mr. Trump.Michael Telesca, a middle-
school teacher at the front of
the line in Greenville, com-
pared the experience to fol-
lowing Bruce Springsteen.
“You come to the show,
and you know exactly what
you’re going to get—all of the
hits and maybe a few sur-
prises, too,” said Mr. Telesca,
whose bushy brown hair is
graying at the temples.
The surprise in Greenville
wasn’t from Mr. Trump, but
the crowd as it debuted a
“send her back” chant. The‘Once you start
going, it’s kind of
like an addiction,’
says one rallygoer.Libby DePiero once drove
her Ford Focus so far to at-
tend a Trump campaign
rally—about 1,000 miles from
her home in Connecticut to
Indiana—that when she lay in
bed that night she thought
the twitching in her driving
leg was coming from an ani-
mal under the mattress.
The 64-year-old retiree,
who prefers sparkly nail pol-
ish, leopard prints and self-
ies with Trump campaign of-
ficials, is
almost always
one of the
first few peo-
pleinlineat
the president’s campaign
events, part of the self-de-
scribed group of “Front Row
Joes” who routinely travel to
see the president perform.
Several, like Ms. DePiero,
have attended more than 50
Trump rallies.
She keeps going because
she trusts only the president
to deliver her the news.
“How else would I know
what’s going on?” she said.
President Trump has
hosted more than 550 ticketed
campaign events since 2015,
at least 70% of which include
his trademark rallies, accord-
ing to Republican officials.
These rallies form the core of
one of the most steadfast po-
litical movements in modern
American political history, a
dynamic that has reordered
the Republican Party.
Mr. Trump’s perpetual
tour attracts a coterie of po-
litical pilgrims who travel
across the country and en-
camp outside arenas for days
at a time for the chance to
stand in the front row and,
for 90 minutes, cheer the
man they say has changed
the U.S. and, in many cases,
their own lives. Somewhere
between 5% to 10% of at-
tendees have been to multi-
ple events, the officials said.
“You go to the rallies, and
he basically tells you that
you don’t have to put up
with ‘the swamp’ and those
kinds of people,” said Saun-
dra Kiczenski, a 40-year-old
Walmart worker from Michi-
gan who has been to 29 ral-
lies. “Because of him I de-
cided not to pay forBYMICHAELC.BENDERELECTION
22
As Democratic Race Intensifies, Joe Biden’s Lead Matters More
BYGERALDF.SEIB
THIS
WEEKLibby DePiero, top right, is part of the self-described group of ‘Front Row Joes’ who routinely travel to President Trump’s rallies.
Cynthia Barten, her husband, Ken Barten, and their granddaughter drove sevenhours from St. Louis to a Trump rally in Cincinnati.LUKE SHARRETT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2), CHERYL SENTER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALFormer Vice President Joe Biden speaking Friday in Laconia, N.H.
His lead in the polls has been consistent for four months.MARY SCHWALM/ASSOCIATED PRESS