Today, I drove two NH college kids home to Northwood, NH to cast their first votes in a presidential primary.
We stopped for lunch on the way–Shorty’s Mexican Grill on Manchester’s Daniel Webster Highway just off I-93 Exit 9-S. We ate in the bar to watch the huuuuge TV playing Fox News. (Over the bar was a set tuned to CNN, playing almost identical stories with slight time-shifting.)
Dean was no longer a story on either station. Fox showed lots of footage of Clark, a long interview with Kerry’s campaign mgr, and an interview with Dem Nat Ctee Chair Terry McAuliffe (he was good!) that the interviewer cut off fast when McAuliffe said, “Bush is going down in the polls, he is toast in November.”
But the story on Fox News was not what we saw in NH with our own eyes. The big highway, I-93, had been bare of signs. But once we got on Route 28 and Route 4 we saw lots of them, set up near houses and businesses. We saw signs for Dennis Kucinich, Lyndon LaRouche–and most of the rest.
Considering the number of candidates, it was striking that so many signs were for Dean–about half of all we saw! Great Dean team up in NH.
In tiny Northwood, about 7 people stood outside polling place with signs. Every single one of them for Dean. These Deaners were middle-aged, local-looking people.
Inside the polling place, tons of flags, friendly people, familiar faces from the town. “Don’t you have an Uncle Bill who worked at the dairy bar?” Yes, he did, about 30 years ago. Zoe and Chace took their thick-paper ballots into canvas-curtained booths to vote. Zoe said the man just after them showed them his ballot–he’d also voted for Dean.
Then to Concord (NH state capital) to say hi at Dean HQ. We drove the length of Concord’s Main St. Near the State House, more Dean people with signs. Also a very few others–one Clark, one Kerry sign. One sign said “Honk for Dean”, which we did! Concord HQ busy and full of workers.
(I posted a lot of this as a comment to the unofficial Dean blog, and I’m too tired from driving to re-draft it now.)
The support and enthusiasm we saw were incredible–and the tiny bits of NH primary coverage on Fox and CNN we saw at lunch gave no hint of what we saw.
No wonder Dean says “I want my country back.” I say, good luck to the good doctor and his supporters.
1 response so far ↓
1 Betsy Devine // Jan 29, 2004 at 10:38 pm
It’s amazing too how unanimous media are in talking about Dean’s NH defeat. In Iowa, Dean came in third. In NH–despite the media’s best efforts to declare him dead in the water–he came in second, with a higher percentage of votes than he had in Iowa. Sigh. But I am heartsick about Joe Trippi’s departure, I liked that man.