Boscawen 14-year-old McLaren Gould asked his dad if they could go to a Donald Trump rally for his birthday on Saturday.
They did. Standing in line outside Windham High School yesterday McLaren’s father, Kyle, explained that it was their first rally, but it was also his 14th month knowing he would vote for Trump. Both father and son have been interested ever since Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.
Despite his recent drop in the polls nationwide and in New Hampshire, Trump has staying power in the state where he won his first primary.
“The last time we were here, we won!” Trump told Granite Staters at his rally.
This is in spite of – and for some people, because of – his unusual candidacy, his lack of political experience and his often-criticized remarks toward women, minorities, and this past week, Gold Star families.
For Gould and many others waiting outside in the heat of the day Saturday, Trump isn’t just any Republican nominee.
“This is something different – there’s too much bad going on in the country,” Gould said. A crane operator for Aerial Crane Service in Bow, Gould said he’s concerned about the loss of manufacturing businesses and appreciated Trump’s strong stance on immigration.
Trump referred to his proposed wall early in his speech Saturday. “We’re going to allow people to come into this country, but they’re going to come in legally.”
Trump’s appeal, Gould said, “is closing the borders and bringing industry back to the U.S. and stop shipping it out.”
Trump used the example of Osram Sylvania lighting company closing its Manchester factory two years ago, resulting in the loss of 139 jobs. The Union Leader reported that those jobs were transferred to China and Mexico.
“You have companies you are working for that are negotiating to go to Mexico,” Trump said. “We’re losing our companies, we’re losing our jobs.”
Manufacturing is on the decline in New Hampshire. A New Hampshire Employment Security report released in June showed that while employment projections show jobs increasing by 7 percent between 2014 and 2024, the manufacturing sector is forecasted to lose 1.4 percent of its positions.
Trump said if he were president, he would create wage growth stronger than the past 18 years.
The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed 255,000 new jobs were created in July, and over the past year, the nation’s average hourly earnings have increased 2.6 percent.
Gould said he also liked that Trump wasn’t a politician. “We don’t need politicians – career politicians – doing what’s good for their agenda,” he said. “Our country needs a backbone.”
Even if that backbone makes regular gaffes during speeches and interviews. Trump did not use a teleprompter Saturday, and slipped in one use of profanity in reference to the Islamic State. Earlier in the week, he got into a fight with the parents of a fallen soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan.
From Harrisville couple Brenda and Fred Spin’s perspective, Trump’s controversial or off-script comments are a brilliant way to further his campaign.
“He’s chosen to be somewhat bombastic to get press coverage,” Brenda said. She added that she and her husband – a nurse and a physician – can relate.
“He thinks out of the box, and common people understand that because when we can’t afford to buy something, we have to think out of the box,” Brenda said. “People in politics don’t think that way. They see a problem and throw money at it.”
Trump has spent significantly less than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on his campaign. According to a June 30 Federal Elections Committee report, Trump had spent just over $71 million before his nomination last month. Clinton spent about $230 million.
In addition to his comments drawing reporters and camera crews, supporters like that Trump talks like them.
Mark Bowlen, a 39-year-old Tewksbury, Mass., man said this is the first year he’s registered to vote. But on Saturday, he attended his third Trump rally, decked out in a “Make America Great Again” hat and several button pins, including one that read “Lock Her Up,” with a photo of Hillary Clinton behind bars.
“He actually reminds me of me,” Bowlen said.
Trump referred to “people in Washington” as “stupid,” and he also called his political opponent “a horrible, horrible person,” in addition to his nickname for her, “Crooked Hillary.”
“He has the same personality,” Bowlen said, comparing himself to his candidate. “We say what we think.”
Bowlen and others waiting for Trump on Saturday listed off their many concerns about the state of the country now and if Clinton became president: loss of work ethic, too many immigrants coming into the country, and a failing health care system.
“His message is resonating,” Bowlen said. “America first.”
Farmington resident Sarah Hanchett, 34, was one of the first people in line Saturday. Hanchett, who works as a supervisor at Hannaford’s, said she has thousands of dollars in medical bills and only just got health insurance for her family.
“I haven’t been to the doctor’s for years,” she said. Hanchett said she felt she and other Americans were paying too much in taxes and were providing too many resources to immigrants, when people like herself aren’t having their needs met.
“I don’t like anything that’s happening right now – I think we need to focus on America first,” Hanchett said.
Most of these topics Trump addressed individually throughout his speech, and then in sum with a line that drew some the loudest cheers from his crowd.
“We’re going to win in every way,” he said. “We’re going to win so much.”
Hanchett – as well as many of the 1,500 or so supporters that packed a hot gymnasium Saturday night to hear their candidate speak – feel Trump is the only person who can create change.
Even if he slips up (Hanchette said she admires former prisoners of war and U.S. Sen. John McCain and didn’t like Trump’s comments a year ago about “I like people who weren’t captured”), Trump’s core supporters in the Granite State still want him as their president.
“I like that he says whatever comes to mind,” Hanchett said. “That’s how I am, that’s how we are.”
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)