BANGOR, Maine - Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a crowd of several hundred people to unite behind Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton during a rally today in Bangor.
Sanders, who crushed Clinton during Maine’s Democratic caucuses, was deployed to bolster the former Secretary of State amid recent polling showing Republican Donald Trump ahead in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Sanders described Trump as a grave threat to the country. He urged the crowd to defeat the real estate mogul and television personality, saying Trump has run a campaign of unbridled bigotry.
“When you run for president of the United States, you cannot insult women. You cannot have a campaign whose cornerstone is bigotry. You cannot run a campaign trying to tear us apart," Sanders said. "That’s not what any campaign should do. And that is reason enough to make sure Mr. Trump does not become president.”
Sanders engaged in a tough primary campaign with Clinton. Like Trump, he drew enthusiastic crowds at rallies across the country with a populist message. In Sanders' case, that message was about free health care, Wall Street corruption and unfair trade deals.
National polls suggest Clinton has so far struggled to attain the same enthusiasm despite Sanders’ endorsement after he lost the nomination contest.
Trump, meanwhile, is poised to take at least one of Maine’s four electoral votes. Such a split has never happened in Maine, one of two states to divide its electoral votes based on who wins in each of its two congressional districts.
Sanders attempted to counter Trump’s appeal to rural voters by focusing on topics that helped his own ascendancy during the campaign, including universal healthcare, free college tuition and taxing the top 1 percent of American earners.
He told the crowd that it needed to elect Clinton to continue that fight.
“In the next month, we have to do everything we can - Maine is a battleground state - we must do everything we can to see that Hillary Clinton is elected our next president. And the day after the election let us continue the struggle to create the kind of country we know that we can be,” he said.
