Political tourists inflate crowds coming to see candidates
HOLLIS, N.H. — When former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum arrived at the Lawrence Barn Community Center on Saturday afternoon, he marveled at the hundreds of people who came out to the rural area to hear him speak.
Unfortunately for him, less than half of those who attended could vote for him Tuesday even if they wanted to.
Every four years, residents of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and other states come in droves to gymnasiums, restaurants and barns around New Hampshire to bask in the attention that presidential contenders give voters in the first-inthe-nation primary state.
Jim Watkins, 56, an artist from Pawtucket, R.I., was inside the barn to help chaperone a group of 20 high school students as part of a Campaign 2012 class at Providence Country Day School. Watkins said they make the trip every four years. They were not alone. “How many political tourists are there in the room?” Santorum asked.
More than half of those seated raised their hands.
“Whoa, how about that?” Santorum said.
“All these foreigners coming in here,” he later joked and eventually limited questions to voters from the Granite State.
Several New Hampshire voters were not amused. “They bused students in from New York. Are you telling me that New York can’t have their own public place to look over candidates?” asked Brenda Shuttle, 51, a sales representative from New Ipswich.
Alice Bury, 69, a retired registered nurse from Amherst, said she sat next to a college student who muttered “idiot” under her breath several times as Santorum spoke.
“When you come in and you don’t know anything about him and you start saying things while he’s speaking and putting him down, I don’t think they were here for the right reasons,” she said.
The tourists didn’t frequent only Santorum events. At a rally for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in Manchester on Wednesday, it was difficult to find anyone who was a New Hampshire resident.
The same was true Sunday at a forum held by former House speaker Newt Gingrich where people packed into the Don Quijote Restaurant.
John Shortall, 46, a stay-athome dad from Norwell, Mass., and seven of his friends made the latest stop on their tour of candidates.
“It started out me and my wife, we are just political junkies,” Shortall said. The tradition started in 1996, he said, when he came to New Hampshire to visit the state’s Republican headquarters.
After all those primaries, Shortall said one candidate made a particularly good impression on him. “Best handshake I ever got? George W. Bush,” he said.
Asked whether he thought the tourism bothers voters here, he said most of the people he spoke to had already met each candidate and made up their minds.
“This is the weekend, the weekend before, you get a lot of us,” he said. “It’s a circus.”
Bob Ehrlich, 47, from Windham, who also attended the Gingrich rally, said he didn’t mind the interlopers from surrounding states.
“They are a sort of disenfranchised because I believe they are on Super Tuesday (when several states hold primaries or caucuses). They don’t get a chance” to meet the candidates, he said.