Quietly, Edwards Works New Hampshire

BEDFORD -- This is a quaint, upper-middle class suburb of New Hampshire, and because it lies catty-corner to vote rich Manchester, presidential candidates generally don’t campaign there too much. So it was a little impressive that Elizabeth Edwards was able to pack about 200 Bedfordians into a very small single-family home yesterday. (That's about 40 more than Rudy Giuliani attracted to his town hall meeting in Concord yesterday).

John Edwards’s New Hampshire campaign manager, Beth Leonard, is adamant: for all the talk of Edwards putting all of his chips into winning Iowa, his campaign is investing heavily in New Hampshire, too. The campaign has ten field offices open now and Leonard oversees 40 full-time staffers. Those totals rival the Obama and Clinton campaign presences in state.

Leonard is a veteran of John Kerry’s Iowa state operation in 2004, and she is therefore very methodical. Edwards isn’t so much interested in endorsements, which is good because he’s getting very few, and he’s not interested in splashy day-long canvasses involving hundreds of volunteers. The campaign has identified hundreds of potential precinct campaigns and is targeting them. (One early source of recruits: the campaign of congressional insurgent Carol Shea Porter.)

If Edwards does well in Iowa, his New Hampshire operation needs to be strong in order to harness the momentum. Edwards couldn’t translate a strong, second place showing in Iowa to New Hampshire: the campaign had only seven paid organizers that year.

The Bedford house party was packed so tightly yesterday that Leonard and Edwards's staff couldn't get in. "To get a crowd this big especially after July 4th for a candidate's wife, that's pretty good," Leonard said. Leonard's challenge is to keep these folks engaged for another six months.

It's a a slog. Elizabeth Edwards attended two more house parties yesterday.

And next week, the campaign will host 14 across the state – none featuring the candidate or spouse.

Comments

Slow and steady wins the race...

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 11:39 AM

I was a precinct captain for Kerry in Iowa before the 2004 caucuses and am a precinct captain for Edwards now in Iowa.

I did not work directly with Beth Leonard during the last campaign, but she was very highly regarded. She and others helped hold the ship together when Kerry was getting one bad poll after another for literally months on end. You just keep lining up precinct captains and holding house parties and getting the message out.

Posted by desmoinesdem | July 12, 2007 1:02 AM

Who are the Carol Shea Porter supporters who are supporting John Edwards?

Posted by Joan Ashwell | July 12, 2007 6:09 PM

John Edwards's momentum is building. I believe that he has learned the lessons of Al Gore that "the truth shall make ye free." The Daily Kos had an excellent article that attracted 571 comments today:
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/12/12120/2180

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