Warren draws midsize crowd, 'energized' supporters in Derry

DERRY, N.H. — On the weekend before the second debates, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren drew a crowd of 500-600 people for a town hall in Derry, New Hampshire, a suburb between Boston and Manchester along Interstate 93 that is the fourth largest city in the state.

The crowd — smaller than her audience of 850 people in Peterborough, New Hampshire on July 8 but still one of the larger showings of the summer for a Democratic candidate — settled into folding chairs in the gymnasium of a public middle school while large metal fans whirled in the background on the hot Saturday afternoon.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was introduced by a local public school teacher. She attended the town hall with her husband, Bruce Mann, and her golden retriever, Bailey.

Warren mostly repeated her stump speech from the town hall in Peterborough three weeks before, beginning with her childhood in Oklahoma and ending with her three-part agenda to fight corruption, make "structural change" in the economy and protect democracy from foreign hackers and state-level voter suppression laws. Her remarks, about four minutes shorter than the July 8 speech, did not include her story about struggling to find childcare as a young mother and calling her Aunt Bee, a moment that resonated with several supporters in Peterborough.

Lines about her mother's personal sacrifice after her father's heart attack — "That's what Americans do," she said — won the first rounds of applause of the speech. A long standing ovation followed her call for all candidates for federal office to release their tax returns online.

Elizabeth Bromm, a UMass-Lowell graduate student and Sandown, New Hampshire resident, said before the speech that she was attending her first political event since the 1996 reelection campaign of former President Bill Clinton. "I think it's very important to have women out there fighting," she said.

Bromm, who said she has been "heckled" for her liberal views over the years at church in her conservative hometown, said she was "so enthused" by the turnout for Warren in Derry. "I am just grateful to see that there's this many intelligent people in southern New Hampshire," she said.

Lisa Raynes of Derry said she supported Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, but pledged to vote for Warren in 2020. "She's real," she said. "She feels like a sister." In addition to bringing "such energy" into the race, she credited Warren for "cutting to the point differently" than Sanders and "getting to the base."

"I feel energized for the Democrats this time around," she said.

After delivering her stump speech, Warren answered three questions, chosen at random from raffle tickets. The first question asked the Massachusetts Senator how she plans to maintain "a healthy rivalry" with the other Democratic candidates "while strengthening the party as a whole."

Warren's answer offered a glimpse into her debate strategy on Tuesday night, when she largely avoided direct attacks but insinuated that her more moderate rivals lack a vision for the country. "I do not attack my fellow Democrats," she said. "I try to talk about my vision," she added, "cause I can tell you why I'm in this race."

The line previewed her most memorable moment from the second debates, a not-so-subtle criticism of former Maryland Congressman John Delaney. "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for," she said at the televised debates in Detroit.

Warren delivered her stump speech, which lasted slightly longer than 30 minutes, and took three questions by raffle number from the crowd in Derry for approximately 15 minutes.

The second and third questions asked about abortion and Social Security, respectively. Warren indicated that, as president, she would prioritize legislation to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law. "We live in a democracy," she said. "About 3 out of every 4 people in America want to see Roe v. Wade upheld."

"When 3 out 4 Americans want to see Roe v. Wade protected, it is now time to introduce that bill in the House and the Senate and get out there and fight for it," Warren continued.

She also complained that "little adjustments" to Social Security "stopped in the late 1980s" and outlined her intentions to protect Social Security by raising the payroll cap. "We need to pull in more revenue and that means we need to gradually lift the cap on how much people pay into Social Security," she said.

With her "plan for everything," Raynes predicted that Warren would be "one of the few that goes forward" into the later rounds of the primary. Raynes hoped that Warren would "maintain this energy" and noted that the Massachusetts Senator seemed to be "relaxing" into her campaign.

John Tehan, a volunteer from Milford, Massachusetts who spent the morning knocking on doors in Nashua, New Hampshire with his wife, went further. "She's got the momentum right now, big time," he said. He added that he has canvassed for his home-state senator in the Granite State three times and was "more successful than the first week" in his most recent outing.

While Bromm indicated that she would happily vote for California Senator Kamala Harris or former Vice President Joe Biden in the general election, she said she was "personally hoping" for Warren to become the Democratic nominee. "I don't think her road is going to be easy at all, but she is strong," Bromm said. "If anyone can do it, she can."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

Reflection: Biden and the Media

Only in New Hampshire can you see two top-tier presidential candidates in the same town on the same day.

After a morning rally-in-the-park with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and a couple hours in the Dover Public Library, I walked across the river to the other side of town for an afternoon speech by the frontrunner, former Vice President Biden. Right away, I knew I was at a different type of event. The location was the dirt parking lot of a neighborhood seafood restaurant, a blue-collar establishment along the river that overlooked a small marina of motor boats.

Biden was scheduled to speak under a medium-sized white tent, as the mostly elderly crowd settled into plastic folding chairs. Although the restaurant and marina were perfect for a candidate who refers to himself as "middle-class Joe," the tent, with the feel of a corporate luncheon or a college reunion, seemed out of place. This was not the large downtown rally of a rising star. This was a carefully planned public appearance for the former Vice President.

Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke to a crowd of 200 people under a tent in the back lot of a seafood restaurant on the banks of the Cocheco River in Dover.

Upon my arrival, I reported to the media check-in and claimed my credential. The Biden event was the first of my summer that required members of the media to register in advance. Others either welcome walk-ups at a sign-in table or have no visible media check-in process.

It was easy to see why the Biden campaign was different. No other candidate had attracted even half of the media presence that the former Vice President did that day. Behind a row of television cameras in the back of the tent, there were three rows of chairs for members of the print media, including representatives from the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Time Magazine and Bloomberg. Other chairs were marked for local publications and one at the end of the last row was reserved for Williams College.

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the speech, the seats were mostly empty as journalists swarmed the edges of the tent. Television crews, with their brightly-colored trucks scattered across the parking lot, were conducting on-camera interviews with voters behind the tent. Print reporters were stalking the sides, looking for the right person to give them a quote, or already engaged in fast-paced conversation with voters, waving a recorder in their face or scribbling notes on a pad.

I soon joined them, finding a couple voters along the sides who were not already talking to somebody else. The ratio of voters to journalists at the event was maybe 8:1.

When Biden finally arrived and took the microphone — I watched from the side of the tent to get a better angle for photos, which would have been blocked by the television cameras from my seat in the roped-off media section — I wanted to keep an eye on these members of the media. Would there be an audible reaction of clicking keyboards and rustling paper if Biden committed a gaffe? What if he hurled a new insult at President Donald Trump or critiqued his Democratic rivals? 

What would eventually make it into the next day's headlines?

The answer was not his emphasis upon foreign policy. After the speech, a dozen protestors, mostly from the New Hampshire Youth Movement with some from the national group Movimiento Cosecha, confronted Biden over his record on deportations during the Obama administration. The activists asked Biden to apologize for the deportations, then raised signs and briefly chanted when the former Vice President declined. Biden clarified his position before turning around and leaving.

A dozen protestors confronted Biden after his speech. The activists listened and held signs as Biden declined to apologize for deportations under the Obama administration.

While the protestors caused a commotion during the meet-and-greet after the speech, they did not disrupt the speech itself. A Fox News report led with the relatively minor confrontation. A Politico headline was misleading. A cursory glance would suggest that Biden was repeatedly interrupted during his speech. Voters who did not stick around after the speech to try to get a photo with the former Vice President or shake his hand would have had no idea what happened.

But when you are the frontrunner, when you attract that many media members for a relatively small event, that seems like the price of doing business. If you limit access to your candidate — Biden did not take questions — reporters are going to leap at anything spontaneous or unexpected. Over the course of the weekend, several journalists told me that the roped-off media section reminded them of the Clinton campaign in 2016.

The protestors themselves were mobbed by journalists after Biden left the scene. I waited for several minutes to talk to Emily Bloch, a Massachusetts-based activist with Movimiento Cosecha. While I was familiar with the New Hampshire Youth Movement protestors from earlier events, Bloch and her organization were new to me. When I reached the front, I remarked on the size of the media presence. "That's good," she said. "That's what we want."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

Reflection: Buttigieg, Introductions and Intelligence

It was the biggest weekend yet. I was scheduled to see five candidates for the first time, all top- or mid-tier contenders, in three days: South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and California Senator Kamala Harris.

As I drove across the state on a Friday morning for the first event, a Buttigieg rally at a downtown park in Dover, I was hoping that an extended period on the campaign trail would allow me to develop a more critical eye. I had seen four candidates at that point, and I had walked away impressed by each one, even the low-polling former Maryland Congressman John Delaney and the underachieving New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. My biggest takeaway was that all the candidates are better in person than on television.

State Representative Matt Wilhelm played a key role at the rally by introducing South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Wilhelm highlighted the national service plan that the Buttigieg campaign recently rolled out.

But I was gaining experience with New Hampshire primary events and I resolved to have a higher standard that weekend. I wanted to pay attention to the little things that distinguish the campaigns and evaluate several of the most pressing questions for the party. Does Biden still have it? Is Buttigieg the real deal? Could Harris parlay a shock upset in the Granite State into a march to the nomination?

For a Friday morning, Buttigieg drew an impressive crowd of 800 people at an outdoor amphitheater in Dover, the fifth-largest city in the state. Aside from a "Pete" sign off to the side and a large American flag backdrop behind the stage, the set design was relatively bare-bones. The crowd did the talking.

Introductions from the head of the Dover Democrats, who touted his organization as the best in the state, and State Representative Matt Wilhelm, a new endorsement for Buttigieg, warmed up the crowd. As the audience waited for Buttigieg, Wilhelm in particular spoke about his experience in the City Year AmeriCorps program and his longtime support for national service. Wilhelm said that he was "a little bit skeptical" when Buttigieg announced his national service plan, but signed on after reading the document. "I was completely blown away," he said.

Although not usually reported, introductions like Wilhelm's are hugely important. They help the candidate establish credibility in the state and begin to address any skepticism or preconceived notions about him or her. They prime voters for specific messages later in the candidate's speech and spotlight policies that sometimes get lost in the larger agenda.

There is a big difference between the introduction that Buttigieg got from a state legislator and, for example, the introduction Booker got two days later from a campaign staffer. It's the difference between a top-tier and a mid-tier candidate.

When Buttigieg finally appeared in his trademark white long-sleeved shirt, he quickly ticked through his freedom-security-democracy platform in just under fourteen minutes. As the crowd applauded each rapid-fire talking point, I felt something was missing. Buttigieg spoke about his faith and his military service, but did not connect most of his policies, aside from his national service plan, to his life in any unique or meaningful way. After the event, Ben Longchamp, a 20-year-old first-time New Hampshire primary voter who wore a NASCAR hat, hit the nail on the head for me. "The first twenty minutes were very much applause lines," he said.

Yet Longchamp, like the other half-dozen Buttigieg supporters that I talked to, came around to Buttigieg after the question-and-answer session. With questions submitted on pieces of paper and read aloud by Wilhelm, Buttigieg did what he does best: navigate tricky situations, stay on-message and feed his popular image as a wunderkind, unfazed by his sudden star turn.

His calm, cool and collected persona was best exemplified when a questioner called his plan to expand the size of the Supreme Court "profoundly undemocratic" and he responded that his proposal, inspired by an article in the Yale Law Review, would require the first ten justices to choose the remaining five nominees by unanimous agreement.

Buttigieg thrived during a question-and-answer session, which voters said showed off his quick-thinking skills and his ability to explain his positions under scrutiny.

His supporters raved about his performance to me afterwards. Almost every voter that I talked to mentioned some variation of his quick-thinking on stage. He was characterized as "so eloquent," "very smart," "articulate," "extremely well-spoken" and "intelligent" by five different supporters.

It was a genuine reaction and obviously true, but it all seemed a little empty to me. Buttigieg is not the only smart candidate in the race. He is not even the only Rhodes Scholar — Booker also won the heralded prize, but talks about his achievement much less. When Buttigieg was studying as an undergrad at Harvard College, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was teaching at the law school there. 14 candidates in total attended Ivy League universities or law schools.

And is that type of elite credential even the most important thing for a presidential candidate? I would guess that, among others, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who graduated from the University of Chicago himself, would answer with a resounding negative.

Yet Casey Sturgis, a teacher from Goran, Maine, pinpointed something, besides his age and sexual orientation, that I think is truly special about Buttigieg. "Every question, he's got an answer," she said. "And if he doesn't have a plan, he's willing to talk."

The national service plan that Wilhelm made sure I would remember showed that. A candidate criticized as light on the details, Buttigieg is beginning to correct that perception with at least one big, ambitious and well-designed plan. As a veteran of AmeriCorps and a longtime advocate for national service, Wilhelm's testimony was a key piece of evidence for Buttigieg.

With one of the largest crowds of the cycle in New Hampshire, Buttigieg should not be counted out any sooner than former President Jimmy Carter, a fellow outsider who talked about his faith, came from a purple region and promised a fresh start after a corruption-plagued administration, should have been counted out in the 1976 primaries.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

Reflection: When a Top-Tier Candidate Comes to Town

My first event with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was always going to be different. As soon as she announced the location of her first appearance in New Hampshire since her well-received debate performance, I knew that much. The visit — a town hall on Monday, July 8 — was scheduled for Peterborough, a town of 6,000 people on the eastern edge of the Monadnock region in the southwestern corner of the state.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren hosted her first event of my eight weeks in New Hampshire on July 8, a town hall in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

I am not a New Hampshire native. My family and I — my parents are college professors in the Philadelphia area — are summer people in the Granite State, which is sometimes worse than being an outsider if you talk to the wrong person. But New Hampshire is, quite literally, a second home for me. Our neighbors are like family and my second-grade year (when my parents were on sabbatical and we stayed year-round in the state) was my favorite year of school.

And then there is Peterborough, a nearby town where I attended a Recreation Department day camp for eight years before volunteering as a counselor-in-training for two years and eventually working as a full-time counselor for two more. More than anywhere else in New Hampshire, I feel attached to Peterborough, grateful to the town for investing in recreation and indebted to its people for welcoming me.

With all of those memories floating around in my head, I made the familiar 25-minute drive to Peterborough to see Warren, a top-tier candidate rising in the polls.

At that point, I already had some experience around the Warren campaign. I attended a debate watch party with her New Hampshire staff and a handful of local supporters in Manchester on my first night in the state. I was impressed in my conversations with her staffers that night, about how they were meeting with elected officials and advocacy groups in New Hampshire to work out the details of their candidate's famous plans, about how they were deploying their volunteers in an ambitious door-knocking operation and about how they personally connected to their candidate through her life story and her big ideas.

I also saw the Warren campaign a week later at the Fourth of July parade in Amherst, where they had by far the largest contingent of any candidate. So I knew that the Warren campaign was well-staffed and sophisticated. But I didn't know if its efforts were beginning to pay off on the ground among New Hampshire voters.

An hour before the scheduled start time of the event, the line stretched several blocks down Grove Street when I first drove by the town hall on a hot Monday afternoon. The line was shorter when I arrived on foot (above).

Peterborough answered that question. I arrived an hour early just to be safe and my jaw dropped at the scene in the downtown district. With police officers directing traffic, I turned onto Grove Street, where the town hall stands at the corner with Main, and saw lines and lines of people stretching several blocks back on the jam-packed sidewalks in the hot afternoon sun.

With street parking out of the question, I tried a usually well-hidden parking lot before throwing my hands in the air and parking a half-mile away at a shopping mall. After speed-walking back to the town hall, I hopped on the end of the line and started to worry that I would not get in. The line was shorter, as several hundred people had already been allowed to enter the building. But small-town New Hampshire fire marshalls are notoriously strict — unwilling to make exceptions for student researchers from small liberal arts colleges.

As I waited and worried with the other people in line, the Warren campaign worked its magic. Staffers with clipboards took my name, zip code, email address and phone number. Supporters who had not signed in with a staffer were sent to the back of the line. While vendors sold merchandise in sidewalk booths, other staffers handed out stickers and paper fans for inside the stuffy town hall that read "I'm a Warren Fan!" 

The line inched forward and while all the seats on the first floor were taken, space in the standing-room-only balcony remained. I must have been one of the last fifty people admitted into the building before the crowd reached its capacity at 650 people. The Warren campaign later reported a total of 850 people for the event, with 200 additional voters in overflow outside, a total only matched by California Senator Kamala Harris and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the more populous Seacoast region the following weekend.

The standing-room-only balcony on the second floor of the town hall was crowded and stuffy, but people waved "I'm a Warren Fan!" fans to keep cool.

The scene inside, especially up in the balcony, was exciting, with some people standing and craning their necks and others sitting on the ground in groups and waving their "I'm a Warren Fan" fans. It was a no-frills setting for a campaign rally that had the feel of a start-up movement. Hype music and speaker systems aside, we could have been there for the first meeting at the town hall, built in 1918, over a hundred years ago.

After introductions from a local supporter and New Hampshire Congresswoman Annie Kuster, Warren appeared and launched into a stump speech that put her biography at the center of her campaign. She detailed her hardscrabble Oklahoma upbringing and her roundabout journey through commuter colleges, special education classrooms and childcare facilities to become a Harvard law professor.

Her message about attending a $50-a-semester commuter college and a $450-a-semester public law school — that her story was "also a story about government" — seemed to resonate in Peterborough, the town with the first tax-supported free public library in the United States. It resonated for me. I thought of the Recreation Department day camp, which offers eight weeks of summer childcare to town residents for only $548.

Between making that connection and seeing such a large crowd take over the familiar streets and sidewalks of Peterborough, I began to realize why campaign visits are so powerful. Candidates bring government closer to the people, but they also bring people closer to their government, providing a lens to think about national and local issues alike.

With her biography and story-telling, Warren, especially, is good at providing that lens. "I can relate to her," Abby Mather, an elementary school teacher from Keene, told me. "It's not just the 'I have a plan.'"

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

'You could vote against Trump twice': Weld campaign plots New Hampshire strategy

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, the lone Republican challenger to incumbent President Donald Trump, addressed a local chapter of the Rotary Club in Manchester, New Hampshire at lunchtime on Monday.

Weld, who served as Massachusetts Governor in the 1990s before running as a vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 2016, described himself as "kind of on the libertarian side" and vowed to "enlarge the electorate that will vote in the Republican primary." A pro-choice Republican, Weld told the midday audience of around 50 people that he opposed the highly restrictive abortion laws recently passed in Alabama and other red states.

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld spoke from behind a podium to the local chapter of the Rotary Club in a private dining room at an Italian restaurant along the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire.

He also pitched himself as "a major environmentalist" who helped to clean up Boston Harbor. He lamented the rollback of clean air and clean water protections under the Trump administration. "Crony capitalism is alive and well in Washington," he said.

The social liberal and fiscal conservative even told the Rotarians that he supported funding for the arts and the humanities. "You might not think it," he smiled. 

Yet when he was asked whether he would continue cutting spending or consider raising revenue to close the deficit, he sounded like a party-line Republican. "It will be a cold day in July before I say we need more revenue to the federal government," he said.

In response to the first question of the afternoon, Weld similarly praised the Affordable Care Act for extending health care coverage to 20 million people, but called the legislation "too government-heavy" for requiring premiums to be the same for everyone of a given age regardless of preexisting conditions. He proposed health savings accounts as the solution, one of the centerpieces of the failed American Health Care Act legislation supported by former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in 2017.

Weld otherwise focused on foreign policy, where he offered harsh words for the President. He called exiting the Iran nuclear deal "a colossal blunder" and warned against rising tensions with the Islamic republic. "My inclination would be non-interventionist with regards to boots on the ground," he said. 

The final question asked Weld, who spoke from behind a podium in a private dining room at a renovated mill, about the consequences of a Trump victory for the Republican Party in 2020. "I guess it would be a fine thing for the Republican Party if you look at the implications of him being on the ballot," he said before predicting "the end of the Republican Party in Washington" in the long term.

In the end, the Boston Brahmin objected to Trump's personality more than anything. He called the President's day-to-day behavior "not a good Rotarian approach" and "like the bread and circuses in the Roman Empire."

Claira Monier, a former regional director of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Reagan administration and a New Hampshire co-chair of the Weld campaign, said after the event that her candidate would reach out to independents and Democrats in the Republican primary. "We might convince them by saying you could vote against Trump twice," she said. 

She believed that Weld could win the New Hampshire primary because Trump lost the state to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. A longtime insider in Republican Party circles, she also cited "a lot of voters who are not happy" because of "racist stuff" like the "Send her back" chants directed at Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Republicans "don't mind his policy, but wish he'd keep his mouth shut," she added.

Whereas she said the Democratic candidates are "targeting millennials where they're going," Monier said the Weld campaign would target the business community and senior citizens with their appearances. "They vote too," she laughed. She thought both constituencies, well-represented among the Rotarians, would turn away from Trump because of his character despite the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. "We are American," she said. "We can read. We watch TV."

As for Weld, Monier likened the 74-year-old to her hero, former President Ronald Reagan. "He's getting better, coming on stronger," she said. "He is getting his stump speech down. He's comfortable to say a few jokes."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

Klobuchar makes play for 'silver surge' with long-term care plans

CONCORD, N.H. — Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar visited an assisted living facility in Concord, New Hampshire on Saturday morning for a roundtable discussion on policy priorities for senior citizens. 

The visit came a week after Klobuchar released a detailed plan to improve long-term care for seniors with chronic conditions, paid for by closing the so-called trust fund loophole for inherited wealth. The plan would also invest in Alzheimer's research at the National Institute of Health, allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and lift the Social Security payroll cap from $133,000 to $250,000 to extend the solvency of the program.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar arrived to a small but packed room of senior citizens at the Granite Ledges assisted living facility on the outskirts of Concord, New Hampshire.

Local Congresswoman Annie Kuster appeared with Klobuchar at the event and Ken Berlin, chairman of the State Committee on Aging, credited the Minnesota Senator for being "the only candidate I've heard of that's even doing this."

The detailed plan and roundtable discussion, which followed a similar event in Des Moines, Iowa on July 15, indicated that, while many of her Democratic rivals are vying for the youth vote with proposals for tuition-free college and student debt relief, Klobuchar is counting upon the support of seniors in the early contests.

Gary Patton, co-chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party senior caucus, underlined a likely rationale for the strategy midway through the discussion. "We are the old reliables," he said. "We are the ones who come out to vote. We are the highest voting age group of any group."

Patton, who told the audience "the reason I'm here is to increase your self-esteem," defended the role of seniors in the economy, something that Klobuchar called "one of my favorite things" from the conversation in her closing remarks. "We are not killing the economy," Patton said.

He added that retirees from across the country are moving to New Hampshire for its tax-friendly environment. "They come in because they know that New Hampshire has no income tax, no sales tax, no tax on your pension," he said. "It is a good place to live. They are not welfare cases when they come in. Many of them are very wealthy."

Klobuchar laughed that she herself has recently changed the way she talks about seniors. "I used to call it the silver tsunami but then I was told by a seniors group that that was too menacing, so I call it the silver surge," she said.

In her ten minutes of speaking time at the beginning of the discussion, Klobuchar described long-term care as "the elephant in the room" and laid out her plan for long-term care insurance and tax credits. "For me, this is personal," she said, telling the audience that her father, 91, has Alzheimer's and has benefitted from memory care.

Klobuchar sat next to hometown New Hampshire Congresswoman Annie Kuster for a wide-ranging discussion that included representatives from the State Committee on Aging, the Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Brian Mehlman, a "soon-to-be senior with two seniors parents" from Nashua, said he was going to read the plan when he returned home. He liked Klobuchar's "more pragmatic approach than some of the other folks" and said he "just yesterday had a conversation with my parents" about assisted living.

Mehlman, a 30-year resident of New Hampshire and former high-tech industry employee, has attended many primary events over the years, including several house parties with then-candidate Barack Obama during the early days of the 2008 campaign. He said "you see a different view" of the candidates in person and noted that Klobuchar looked "completely stressed" when other panelists exceeded their allotted speaking time. "I would have held my visual cues," he laughed.

While Klobuchar and Kuster, the local congresswoman, spoke for the longest periods of time, the panel touched on a wide variety of issues, from early detection of Alzheimer's to transportation and hospice services.

Klobuchar also acknowledged that many seniors want to keep working part-time and contributing to their communities after retirement. "I personally enjoy having seniors in the workplace," she said, sharing that she hired the retired president of the National Farmers Union, David Frederickson, as her Agricultural Outreach Director during her first term in the Senate. "What I loved about having him in the workplace was all the young people," she said, who would come to their elder colleague "not just for career advice, but for romantic advice."

Frederickson, who later served as Minnesota Agricultural Commissioner from 2011-2019, was just shy of 65 years old when he was hired by Klobuchar in 2007. Frederickson, now 75, is younger than Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Klobuchar, 59, is hoping that Frederickson and others of his generation spurn Sanders and especially Biden, her fellow moderate, for a candidate that spotlights their issues.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

'Smartest, healthiest, fairest and most prosperous': Castro campaigns on four-part platform

NASHUA, N.H. — He was an hour late, but after a long day of flight cancellations and traffic jams, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro arrived to a restless but spirited atrium of 150-200 people at Nashua Community College on Thursday night.

The large turnout on a weekday night in New Hampshire's second largest city provided yet another indication that Castro, boosted by a well-received debate performance last month, has climbed into the middle tier of candidates for the Democratic nomination. 

"CNN is doing their live draw of the debate nights for July 30th and 31st so we're going to find about the next debate," Castro told the crowd as he took the stage. "I hope you watched the first one." The former HUD Secretary later read aloud the results of the live draw, which assigned him to the second night with former Vice President Joe Biden and California Senator Kamala Harris.

Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro departed his hometown of San Antonio at 5 a.m. on Thursday morning but arrived an hour late after a long day of flight cancellations and traffic jams.

Although his most memorable moment of the first debate came when he challenged his fellow Texan, Congressman Beto O'Rourke, on immigration, Castro did not start with the issue. He instead organized his speech around his aspiration for the United States to become "the smartest, the healthiest, the fairest and the most prosperous nation on earth." 

The four-part message was exactly what Jonathan Gourlay, a Peterborough, New Hampshire resident who described himself as "sold on Julian Castro" since the then-San Antonio Mayor delivered the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, believed would eventually vault the first-time candidate into the top tier. 

"He has to make people realize he's got a full platform," Gourlay, 60, said. He complained that "other candidates, fringe candidates" often limited themselves and became "focused on one thing," but called Castro "genuine" and "captivating." He hoped that the 44-year-old would "excite all the people who didn't vote in 2016."

After he outlined his plans for education, health care and criminal justice reform under the first three pillars, Castro finally addressed immigration under the fourth. He acknowledged that he has been vocal — "I haven't been shy" — and argued that Democrats should double down on the issue as a strategy to defeat President Donald Trump. "I think the best policy is not to run and hide and squirm and feel like we just can't do anything on immigration," he said. "No, we have to give the American people a strong, positive alternative."

Yet his discussion of immigration arrived nearly twenty minutes into his stump speech, wedged between considerations of housing and climate change. He also did not mention the specific provision that he challenged O'Rourke to oppose, Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which makes "improper entry into the United States by an alien" a criminal rather than a civil offense.

Castro showcased his relaxed demeanor and even-keeled delivery in a 33-minute speech and 11-minute question-and-answer session at Nashua Community College.

If Castro did not emphasize immigration in Nashua, he devoted almost four minutes near the top of his speech to education. He said he and his twin brother, Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, "are proud products of the public schools of Texas" and joked how they later attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School "together, because I couldn't get rid of my brother."

His plan for the country included everything from universal pre-K for three- and four-year-olds to a teacher tax credit to special needs education. He also defended tuition-free public university and community college as "not a radical idea" and echoed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who attended the University of Houston for $50 a semester, when he detailed the history of tuition costs in Texas. "Folks will tell you that in the 1980s, 1970s, it was $50 or $100," Castro said.

The former HUD Secretary also demonstrated his expertise on housing, an issue that he said was connected to education, job opportunities and health care. He explained that the subprime mortgage crisis led to one of the lowest homeownership rates in forty years and drove people into an already tight rental market. 

"Here in Nashua, y'all have seen rents go through the roof," he said. "What I think you're seeing is more and more people over the years who can't find housing that's affordable in Boston have moved out farther and farther and farther in this state."

Earlier in the speech, Castro responded to "the remarks the president has made both in person and on Twitter" as evidence that "we're living through a moment right now," comparable to earlier times in American history when politicians said "go back to Africa" or "the Irish need not apply." A candidate with a mostly relaxed and even-keeled delivery, he raised his voice in opposition to these politicians. "Everybody counts in America," he said to a round of applause.

Castro, who is not a native Spanish speaker, closed with a line that landed with a laugh at the first debates on a night when several non-Hispanic candidates stumbled through responses in Spanish. "I know that on January 20, 2021, we're going to say adios to Donald Trump!"

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College. 

High school debaters grill Hickenlooper on Senate race, Sudan protests

HANOVER, N.H. — Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper fielded well-researched questions from some of the top high school debaters in the country on Wednesday afternoon at the Hanover Inn on the campus of Dartmouth College.

The high school debaters, students at the four-week Dartmouth Debate Institute summer intensive program that has produced national champions at the high school and collegiate level, challenged Hickenlooper on a wide variety of issues, ranging from fracking to the pro-democracy protests in Sudan.

"That's the last time I invite all these debaters," Hickenlooper laughed after a question on court-packing and abortion rights. "They ask the toughest questions."

Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper addressed a first-floor conference room at the Hanover Inn in Hanover, New Hampshire. The crowd included around 30 high school debaters from across the country and 20 New Hampshire voters.

The question, phrased as a choice between hoping that Chief Justice John Roberts sides with the liberal justices or adding new justices to the Supreme Court to defend Roe v. Wade, asked whether Hickenlooper had reconsidered his opposition to court-packing in light of a recent law passed in Alabama that effectively bans abortion in the state. After ticking through his record on reproductive rights, Hickenlooper responded that he would only consider the possibility "if the basic civil rights of this country seem at risk."

The toughest query of the afternoon came several minutes later, when a debater acknowledged that Hickenlooper is "quite popular" in his home state of Colorado and asked "why not enter the 2020 Senate race" against the incumbent Republican, Colorado Senator Cory Gardner.

"A fair question," Hickenlooper said. "You're not the first person to ask that question."

The former brewpub owner began that he believed "in life you've got to do the things, or at least you're going to be more successful, doing things you're naturally inclined toward" and explained that "what I love most is putting teams together."

But Hickenlooper also expressed confidence in the current crop of Democratic candidates for Senate in Colorado. "I don't think they need me to beat Cory Gardner," he said. He argued that he was the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump in purple states like Ohio and cited his record "doing the big progressive things that Washington hasn't been able to do."

A question on the pro-democracy movement in Sudan allowed Hickenlooper to sketch the outlines of his foreign policy with several buzzwords. "I wouldn't call myself ready to create a doctrine, but if I was, I would create a doctrine of full security and constant engagement," he said.

Hickenlooper, who cited visits to the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado and seminars at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington as the source of his thinking on foreign policy, identified economic conditions as one of the root causes of "situations like what we see in Sudan." He attempted to connect the Sudanese pro-democracy movement to the migrant caravans from three Northern Triangle countries in central America. "It is almost always some sort economic catastrophe that drives people to those kinds of unthinkable acts," he said.

Hickenlooper answered questions on court-packing, the 2020 Senate race in Colorado and the pro-democracy movement in Sudan, among other issues.

Originally a geologist by trade, Hickenlooper seemed more in his element on a question about fracking. He explained that, although he marched against nuclear power in the 1980s, his views have changed because of climate change and he now considers nuclear energy, as well as natural gas, a necessary alternative to coal.

"Fracking is a tool to get hydrocarbons," he said. He called the procedure "unsafe" in "places like Pennsylvania and New York," but said there was "less risk" in his home state of Colorado because  "the groundwater is very shallow" and described the precautions that he oversaw as governor.

"We make them drill three water wells around every oil well and measure those water wells every year at the oil well to make sure there is no water pollution," he said. "We haven't seen it. Doesn't mean there's not risk."

Hickenlooper also addressed another issue that came across his desk as governor: gun violence. He described his response to the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, when Colorado became the first purple state to pass universal background checks on gun purchases. He said his locally-focused, data-driven approach eventually won over independents and Republicans.

"We had the national statistics on background checks, but we hadn't got the local Colorado statistics," he said. "The statistics were so powerful when they came back"

Hickenlooper listed that, in one year, a previous law which had covered 50 percent of gun purchases with background checks caught 38 people convicted of homicide, 132 people convicted of sexual assault, 3000 people convicted of violent crimes and 140 people with an outstanding warrant for arrest.

"Those are so staggering when they're in your community and we presented them to the Republicans," he continued. "Since then, we have never heard a word that any Republican senator in the state of Colorado even considers repealing universal background checks."

Yet, the question, which asked how he would address gun violence as president, invariably came back to the Senate.

"The first thing we got to do is win the U.S. Senate," Hickenlooper said. "Let me make a personal guarantee that we will win Colorado."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.