The presidential campaign is starting in New Hampshire.
I am in New England this week, expecting to see Nikki Haley three times and Donald Trump once.
In two presidential cycles, 2016 and 2020, I have seen about 80 presidential campaign events in person and up close. It isn't hard to be in the front row -- just get there early. It is better to be a "citizen" than "media." Media is seated in the back.
This may be a skimpy season for political tourism. Joe Biden appears to be on the brink of making official his re-election campaign. Most candidates on the Democratic bench don't want to say aloud that Biden is old. They want to replace him but they don't disagree with him, so Biden freezes them out. Two candidates well outside the Democratic mainstream, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have entered the race. Each is "fringe," but in different ways. I expect them to visit New Hampshire to try to get traction. If one of them began drawing big, enthusiastic crowds, it could put pressure on Biden to announce that he has changed his mind. That would change everything. So, too, would the entry of a "mainstream" candidate.
In the GOP Nikki Haley is taking on Trump. Her website announces her planned Town Halls:
Donald Trump has one event. Trump will be speaking at Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Manchester at 4:30 in the afternoon on Thursday. If Trump starts on time and ends on time I can get to Haley's Thursday evening event.
Standard practice for candidate events is to make tickets available via eventbrite. You give them your email and phone number and they send an electronic ticket. They are free. From then on one gets three or four emails and text messages every day, hyping the candidate, asking for money, and selling merchandise.
Retro Haley tee shirts!!! Act now!!! Going fast!!!
I decided to stay in the hotel where the Trump event will take place. The event opens at 1:30 p.m. but the speech doesn't start until 4:30 p.m. My experience from prior campaigns is that Trump has warm-up acts and then a big introduction. All of that will give me time to count the audience, photograph the press, visit with the attendees, and survey the merchandise tables. Being at the hotel will make getting into the venue and negotiating the security easier. Trump will have Secret Service security. Other candidates will not, but there are always police around at campaign events. The hotel room rate jumped for the day of Trump's visit. Normally it would be about $150/day. On the day of Trump's event the room is $247.
An important figure in New Hampshire political journalism is Adam Sexton. He graduated from Southern Oregon's Ashland High School, and later returned to the Rogue Valley to work as a reporter for KDRV. He is now political director at WBUR in Manchester, It does a good job covering New Hampshire political news. New Hampshire is in the Boston TV market, so most of its television comes out of Boston, where New Hampshire is an afterthought.
I will have photographs and comments on the events in posts to this blog later this week.
Wowser! I think I'd rather go leaf-peeping. But more power to you.