BRATTLEBORO — It wasn't the first time that Bernie Sanders has marched in the Strolling of the Heifers parade.
And it wasn't the first time that Bernie Sanders has basked in the cheers of spectators as he walked up Main Street.
But last Saturday was different.
The crowd was bigger, and the cheers were louder for the junior U.S. Senator from Vermont.
That's because Sanders is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The enthusiastic reception for Sanders in Brattleboro on June 6 was another sign of his new-found celebrity. Sanders has been drawing big crowds on the campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states that will cast votes for the party's nominee in 2016.
Another sign of his celebrity was how short Sanders' speech was after the parade. He spoke for a couple of minutes, and then was whisked off to Keene, N.H., where a standing-room-only crowd estimated at more than 800 people were waiting for him at the Keene Recreation Center.
On Saturday morning, Sanders made the rounds of the parade's staging area on Flat Street, shaking hands with hundreds of fans and parade participants.
As the parade began and moved up Main Street, he took time to greet old friends that he spotted in the crowd. There were more than a few hugs and plenty of enthusiasm.
If there was any disappointment among the thousands who turned out for the parade, it was that many of them didn't get to hear Sanders' remarks. He was gone before many of his supporters knew what was happening.
Then again, considering how well Sanders is known in Windham County, he didn't need to give one of his trademark stem-winding speeches.
“We're not going to leave people behind,” Sanders said from the bandstand on the Common as people crowded around it to listen. “We're going to make sure that our people and our kids have decent jobs, a decent education, decent health care, and that the food we eat is healthy, and that it's local. Thank you, Brattleboro, for the support you have given me in the past and we are going to go forward together.”
Strolling of the Heifers founder Orly Munzing didn't mind that the parade got upstaged by Sanders.
“The Strolling of the Heifers wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the wonderful, 'president-elect,' Bernie Sanders,” Munzing said in her introduction of Sanders.
Munzing said that Sanders was an early supporter of the event, which began in 2002 with the first parade up Main Street. The then-Congressman even won a milking contest one year.
The stroll, Sanders said at his presidential campaign website, berniesanders.com, “celebrate[s] Vermont agriculture and family farms. It gives us an opportunity to visit with a lot of old friends and it's a lot of fun.”
The Keene speech was Sanders' first appearance in that town, and marked the start of a week of campaigning in New Hampshire and the Midwest.
In his remarks at the Recreation Center, Sanders said that the campaign “is not about Bernie Sanders. You can have the best president in the history of the world but that person will not be able to address the problems that we face unless there is a mass movement, a political revolution in this country. The only way we win and transform America is when millions of people stand up as you're doing today and say. 'Enough is enough. This country belongs to all of us and not a handful of billionaires.'”
“I am not going to give up,” Sanders said. “We are going to take them on.”