Report from New Hampshire

Cady Short-Thompson of Wyoming is in New Hampshire, as part of a once-every-four-years academic project.

She'll be filing reports on her trip. Some highlights from her first dispatch:

Of all of the headquarter visits thus far, our most favorable impressions were of Senator Obama’s campaign office in Manchester. Well populated by over a hundred volunteers and staffers all busily working on campaign communication activities, the energy in the large, packed office was palpable. We noted that there was an energetic and youthful buzz about the whole office, with signs and walls painted with motivational appeals (Believe, Hope, Change, etc) and campaign slogans, nearing the level of a social movement. Moreover, of six campaign offices we visited, Obama’s was the only headquarters with a fully formulated, specific, detailed travel schedule in place for the next several days...


The single campaign event near Manchester on January 2, 2008 was a rally for Rudy Giuliani at the American Legion in Hooksett. With most candidates campaigning frenetically in a last push in Iowa, New Hampshire was quiet this evening. Being the beginning of the last week before the New Hampshire primary and on the eve of the Iowa caucus, we found New Hampshire voters ready and eager for the big show to begin. On this single digit frigid evening, nearly 200 people crammed into the American Legion hall to hear Giuliani. Perhaps interestingly to Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky residents, the norm at the events in New Hampshire is for the voters to be numerically matched by or outnumbered by the media, in some cases dramatically so. With most of the media masses still in Iowa or in transit to New Hampshire, there were twice as many voters as media personnel, a circumstance that will be radically changed by tomorrow.

Read the full dispatch here