Wednesday, January 09, 2008
NH Primary Special 1.8.07
Me, just to the left of Hillary, the day before she won the primary in NH. More on this later.
Only in New Hampshire. At the very last second, I boarded a bus up to New Hampshire. I hadn’t actually decided who I liked yet, but I had a lot of friends who were on staff for Hillary, and so that was the bus I took. We were meant to get to Concord by midnight, and my friend Amy Morse’s family very kindly said I could stay with them. In the way that political campaigns always are, we were all in for an adventure, and midnight turned into much later, and all of a sudden our bus was going to the part of New Hampshire close to Canada, instead of centrally located Concord, and I had to get off the bus and switch real quick-like. Bleary-eyed in a New Jersey rest stop, I chatted with a group of retired female Navy officials. We drank hot chocolate and stocked up on those hand warmers as New Hampshire was meant to have a lot of snow. A bus that would be stopping in Concord pulled in, I was pulled off of mine and thrown on the other one. We arrived in Concord at 6am to several feet, literally, of powdery snow. Oh New Hampshire. Several house lights on the little street flicked on, and people welcomed us in with maps, descriptions of the school everyone was to report to in a couple of hours for a rally. Only in this state did it seem normal to walk into someone’s house before sunrise, a friend’s parents who I had never met, to tiptoe upstairs quietly and crawl into a bed, trying not to make any noise. I slept for 2 hours. Amy came back from Boston. We canvassed- Amy for John Edwards, I for Hillary, and Amy’s little sister for Obama. We just wanted to get out the democratic vote and were all friends, we said.
I watched the debate in the state capitol, Concord, in the bar across from the state's Obama HQ. I seemed to be the only Hillary person there, but it was fun to watch her win the debate to the dismay of so many of my obnoxious Obama friends.
So much fun, NH - one minute you are being whisked off to a rally, then you are standing in the snow with a sign, then you drive off to sleep in random people's houses. Never a dull minute! I was allergic to Amy's cats and so my friend Reuben Teague, a great volunteer I worked with in 2004 in NH, told me I could go stay with his parents on their farm outside of Concord. A ladybug slept next to me on my pillow and in the morning I was licked awake by one of the family dog's, but over breakfast Reuben's dad offered me maple syrup that they had extracted from their own trees, and I heard the stories of bear break-ins and crazy trips around the world. Thanks, Teagues!
In Hampton, NH I stayed with my friend Bev Hollingworth, former president of the state senate. Bev is one of those blessed people who is old enough to be my mother but who makes you dizzy just watching how much energy she has. We went to hear Hillary speak and Bev passed me off as a daughter so that I got to sit right up front. I felt guilt, since I was no longer a NH voter, but quel fun to sit right up close to Hillary. The next morning, before dawn, we drove to the other side of the state for a press conference.
On actual primary day I went to the Portsmouth field office in the morning for an hour until I headed out to polling places, where we would collectively attempt to make up the minds of the undecided by outnumbering and outtalking the Obama people. In that one hour, a nice bit of people watching. First, Billie Jean King came in, bid me good morning and then talked about why she was working for Hillary like the rest of us. She wore this electric purple wool blazer with rimless glasses that were tinted the same shade as her jacket. She had paper white skin and looked a lot like Elton John, strangely, not in a bad way, but in a way that you might guess they were brother and sister. Accompanying her was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life- tall, muscular, cropped blonde hair, an unbelievable knockout. I think her job was to drive Billie Jean around and make sure she didn’t leave her purse anywhere. I wondered if she was her lover. Next, as I came back from the bathroom I practically bumped right into General Wesley Clark who was warm and effusive, a very nice handshake, and had very pretty and very tanned skin. Sunblock, Wes! Sunblock! Before I left, Chelsea fairly skipped into that tiny office, shook my hand and said she liked my hat. I said “Chelsea, funny but your mother said the same thing last night.” I chatted with her for a minute and asked if she was getting the chance to eat anything that approached the vegetable family and she said it was scary, but she had probably already had 6 cups of coffee to drink and it wasn’t even 10am.
I went out to stand at a polling location for most of the day. Mine was in Newington, which is a suburb of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gentrifying like any other fortuitously located place these days, those gentrifiers loathed by any of the original inhabitants of the town. I stood that morning with 3 farmers from Newington, from some of the last farms left in that town. I had never wished so sincerely that instead of my jeans and cowboy boots and pea coat, I had been wearing overalls and construction boots and a Carhart jacket. I wished I had a beard and and could talk about backhoes, but I can only dream. An outsider, a woman from another part of New Hampshire walked up to stand with us. People starting talking about where they were from. It seemed to be an internal, farmer, type of talk and I stayed quiet. Finally, after going around an entire circle of farmers, one of their wives looked at me and said politely “And dear, where are you from?” I gritted my teeth and tried to smile. “I’m from Washington, DC,” oh, “Of course you are,” they chuckled. Oh well.
My dear mother, Leah, has devoted her days to Obama, and I hope she is having fun. I went to NH for Hillary, then Leah decided to go to South Carolina for Obama, and every time I know she is working for him, or any of my friends is working for him, it makes me roll up my sleeves to work more for Hillary. I sort of wonder if this has the effect of my mother and my own work on behalf of our respective candidates cancelling the other ones work out, but at the end of the day all any of this does is drive up voter participation if we are lucky, and so last Saturday while Leah was in SC, I was on the phone for 10 hours to people in rural Tennessee for Hillary. “Honey,” a sweet 84 year old woman named Lois just cooed, “Im in a bubble bath right now, but don’t you fret, Ill get out to vote for our candidate.”
I think it'll be a long road for my girl Hill, but Im ready for the long road and I feel in my gut she is the person who can win. Go Hillary! ¶ 6:12 PM
Me, just to the left of Hillary, the day before she won the primary in NH. More on this later.
Only in New Hampshire. At the very last second, I boarded a bus up to New Hampshire. I hadn’t actually decided who I liked yet, but I had a lot of friends who were on staff for Hillary, and so that was the bus I took. We were meant to get to Concord by midnight, and my friend Amy Morse’s family very kindly said I could stay with them. In the way that political campaigns always are, we were all in for an adventure, and midnight turned into much later, and all of a sudden our bus was going to the part of New Hampshire close to Canada, instead of centrally located Concord, and I had to get off the bus and switch real quick-like. Bleary-eyed in a New Jersey rest stop, I chatted with a group of retired female Navy officials. We drank hot chocolate and stocked up on those hand warmers as New Hampshire was meant to have a lot of snow. A bus that would be stopping in Concord pulled in, I was pulled off of mine and thrown on the other one. We arrived in Concord at 6am to several feet, literally, of powdery snow. Oh New Hampshire. Several house lights on the little street flicked on, and people welcomed us in with maps, descriptions of the school everyone was to report to in a couple of hours for a rally. Only in this state did it seem normal to walk into someone’s house before sunrise, a friend’s parents who I had never met, to tiptoe upstairs quietly and crawl into a bed, trying not to make any noise. I slept for 2 hours. Amy came back from Boston. We canvassed- Amy for John Edwards, I for Hillary, and Amy’s little sister for Obama. We just wanted to get out the democratic vote and were all friends, we said.
I watched the debate in the state capitol, Concord, in the bar across from the state's Obama HQ. I seemed to be the only Hillary person there, but it was fun to watch her win the debate to the dismay of so many of my obnoxious Obama friends.
So much fun, NH - one minute you are being whisked off to a rally, then you are standing in the snow with a sign, then you drive off to sleep in random people's houses. Never a dull minute! I was allergic to Amy's cats and so my friend Reuben Teague, a great volunteer I worked with in 2004 in NH, told me I could go stay with his parents on their farm outside of Concord. A ladybug slept next to me on my pillow and in the morning I was licked awake by one of the family dog's, but over breakfast Reuben's dad offered me maple syrup that they had extracted from their own trees, and I heard the stories of bear break-ins and crazy trips around the world. Thanks, Teagues!
In Hampton, NH I stayed with my friend Bev Hollingworth, former president of the state senate. Bev is one of those blessed people who is old enough to be my mother but who makes you dizzy just watching how much energy she has. We went to hear Hillary speak and Bev passed me off as a daughter so that I got to sit right up front. I felt guilt, since I was no longer a NH voter, but quel fun to sit right up close to Hillary. The next morning, before dawn, we drove to the other side of the state for a press conference.
On actual primary day I went to the Portsmouth field office in the morning for an hour until I headed out to polling places, where we would collectively attempt to make up the minds of the undecided by outnumbering and outtalking the Obama people. In that one hour, a nice bit of people watching. First, Billie Jean King came in, bid me good morning and then talked about why she was working for Hillary like the rest of us. She wore this electric purple wool blazer with rimless glasses that were tinted the same shade as her jacket. She had paper white skin and looked a lot like Elton John, strangely, not in a bad way, but in a way that you might guess they were brother and sister. Accompanying her was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life- tall, muscular, cropped blonde hair, an unbelievable knockout. I think her job was to drive Billie Jean around and make sure she didn’t leave her purse anywhere. I wondered if she was her lover. Next, as I came back from the bathroom I practically bumped right into General Wesley Clark who was warm and effusive, a very nice handshake, and had very pretty and very tanned skin. Sunblock, Wes! Sunblock! Before I left, Chelsea fairly skipped into that tiny office, shook my hand and said she liked my hat. I said “Chelsea, funny but your mother said the same thing last night.” I chatted with her for a minute and asked if she was getting the chance to eat anything that approached the vegetable family and she said it was scary, but she had probably already had 6 cups of coffee to drink and it wasn’t even 10am.
I went out to stand at a polling location for most of the day. Mine was in Newington, which is a suburb of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gentrifying like any other fortuitously located place these days, those gentrifiers loathed by any of the original inhabitants of the town. I stood that morning with 3 farmers from Newington, from some of the last farms left in that town. I had never wished so sincerely that instead of my jeans and cowboy boots and pea coat, I had been wearing overalls and construction boots and a Carhart jacket. I wished I had a beard and and could talk about backhoes, but I can only dream. An outsider, a woman from another part of New Hampshire walked up to stand with us. People starting talking about where they were from. It seemed to be an internal, farmer, type of talk and I stayed quiet. Finally, after going around an entire circle of farmers, one of their wives looked at me and said politely “And dear, where are you from?” I gritted my teeth and tried to smile. “I’m from Washington, DC,” oh, “Of course you are,” they chuckled. Oh well.
My dear mother, Leah, has devoted her days to Obama, and I hope she is having fun. I went to NH for Hillary, then Leah decided to go to South Carolina for Obama, and every time I know she is working for him, or any of my friends is working for him, it makes me roll up my sleeves to work more for Hillary. I sort of wonder if this has the effect of my mother and my own work on behalf of our respective candidates cancelling the other ones work out, but at the end of the day all any of this does is drive up voter participation if we are lucky, and so last Saturday while Leah was in SC, I was on the phone for 10 hours to people in rural Tennessee for Hillary. “Honey,” a sweet 84 year old woman named Lois just cooed, “Im in a bubble bath right now, but don’t you fret, Ill get out to vote for our candidate.”
I think it'll be a long road for my girl Hill, but Im ready for the long road and I feel in my gut she is the person who can win. Go Hillary! ¶ 6:12 PM
