La Crosse’s new airport director’s been preparing for top-ticket candidates since he started and has already hosted a Trump rally

Jeff Tripp has only been on the job about two months, but he already has a presidential candidate headed to town.

La Crosse’s newest airport director has handled campaign stops before, including ones from Donald Trump. And, he’s been preparing for these visits, since he started working for the city.

“I’d actually asked staff,” Tripp said Tuesday on La Crosse Talk PM, “my first week here, ‘What’s our plan for this eventuality?’ knowing it was coming, given the fact that this airport has a long history of supporting the presidential and VP candidates, due to our geographical location”

La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

Tripp sounded like he was a tad relieved to hear Trump would be holding a town hall Thursday at the La Crosse Center instead of rallies like he’s done in the past at airports.

Back in 2020, Tripp’s airport in Prescott, Ari., hosted one of those Trump hangar rallies.

“That was about 20,000 people on the airport itself, so I had about five days to put together the event,” Tripp said.

For this one, Tripp just needs to work with Secret Service to get Trump in and out smoothly.

“You’re the experts, you’re tasked with protecting your chargee,” Tripp said. “We’re in a support role. So, it’s been easy for this event to say, ‘Where are we staging, where are we parking the aircraft, what resources do you need from us?’”

And Tripp is taking notes, because he anticipates Trump won’t be the only candidate to be touching down in La Crosse before Nov. 5. 

“There’s some things that they may require that we can handle, that we might not have thought of, and we’ll add it to our written checklist,” Tripp said. “So the basic plan that we’re using for this Thursday event is one that we continue to use for future events.”

Trump lands in La Crosse on Thursday and will host what’s being called a town hall with Tulsi Gabbard as moderator.

No other details about the event have been released, including format, questions or crowd size.