PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — The line stretched several blocks down Grove Street from the town hall in Peterborough, New Hampshire on Monday afternoon, more than an hour before Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was scheduled to hold her first event in New Hampshire since the Democratic debates.
As police officers directed traffic and parking spots disappeared in the mid-sized town of 6,000 people, Warren staffers swarmed the sidewalks, taking names, email addresses and phone numbers as part of a hyper-efficient sign-in process. At least two vendors sold Warren-themed merchandise and volunteers handed out Medicare-for-All literature.
When the doors finally opened, the fire department could only allow the first 650 Warren supporters into the building, filling rows of tightly-packed folding chairs on the main floor before opening the standing-room-only wooden balcony. An overflow crowd of 200 additional Warren supporters listened outside from the front steps after hearing an abbreviated message from Warren when she first arrived.
The reported total of 850 people, one of the largest crowds of the 2020 election cycle in the Granite State, built upon more than a month of momentum for the Warren campaign. After a polling bump in the beginning of June, Warren stood as the only top-tier candidate on the first night of the Democratic debates and delivered a strong performance.
On Monday, hours before she appeared in Peterborough, her campaign announced that she raised $19.1 million during the second quarter, topping Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders with $18 million and California Senator Kamala Harris with $12 million, all while holding no fundraisers.
The approach — eschewing big-dollar donors for small-dollar contributions — has largely worked because of the devotion that Warren has quickly inspired among her followers, particularly as she has put her personal story at the center of her campaign.
The Massachusetts Senator, "for anybody that hasn't met me yet," spent almost fifteen minutes of her stump speech on her hardscrabble upbringing in Oklahoma and her roundabout journey through commuter colleges, special education classrooms and childcare facilities to become one of the top law professors in the country.
She spoke endearingly of her "three much-older brothers — To this day, they are referred to as 'The Boys'" — all of whom served in the military and one of whom still claims that he could perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary each year at Thanksgiving dinner. She laughed that she was "what used to be called a late-in-life baby" or "the surprise" and described how her father had a lot of jobs when she was growing up. "He sold paint," she said. "He sold carpet. He sold fencing. He sold housewares."
Warren shifted into a hushed tone as she told the audience that her father suffered "a massive heart attack" when she was a teenager. While she could have used the story to talk about her support of Medicare for All, she continued into an account of economic anxiety and family sacrifice that resonated on a deeper level with the audience. "That's when I learned words like mortgage and foreclosure," she said.
She described how her mother took a minimum-wage job that saved her house and her family, a lesson that she took with her for many years. "When it comes down to it, you reach down deep, you find what you need to find, you pull it up and you take care of the people you love," she said to a roar of applause.
Yet Warren realized years later that her family's story was "also a story about government." She explained that the minimum wage at the time, according to congressional records, was set at a level that would support a family of three. The difference between minimum wage laws now and then, she argued, is a direct result of "who government works for."
After the brief detour into minimum-wage policy discussion, Warren returned to her own adult life, which she prefaced had "a lot of twists and turns and kinks in it." She spoke about attending a $50-a-semester commuter college on a part-time waitressing gig, losing her dream job as a special education teacher when she got pregnant and eventually going back to a $450-a-semester public law school as a young mother.
Warren later detailed more about her struggle to find daycare for her two children. "It was childcare that nearly killed me," she said. Warren told the audience that when she could not find an adequate daycare facility, her Aunt Bee moved across the country on a day's notice and stayed for sixteen years to help raise her children. "I'm on this stage today because of my Aunt Bee," she said.
The personal stories that Warren shared went a long way with Abby Mather, an elementary school teacher from Keene, New Hampshire. "I can relate to her," Mather said. "It's not just the 'I have a plan.' She's really lived the reality that so many people are stuck in." Mather recounted the difficulty of finding affordable childcare and recalled how her mother raised nine kids on a modest income. "There's nothing like it when there's not enough," she said.
While her mother's job informed her support for a higher minimum wage, Warren said her experience as a young mother is why she is running for president. "I'm grateful," she said. She continued that although America opened doors for her, she believed those doors were closed today.
For Warren, a wealth tax, which she compared to a property tax, is the key behind her signature proposals for universal childcare, tuition-free four-year public college and student debt relief. She said her wealth tax would only apply to the top one-tenth of one percent. "Your first 50 million dollars free and clear," she said. "But for your 50-millionth-and-first dollar, you got to pitch in two cents."
While she quickly ran through what she plans to do with the revenue, Warren reprised one of her greatest hits, from a 2011 viral video during her first Senate campaign, to defend the idea of a wealth tax. "If you built that fortune here in America, you built it at least in part using workers all of us helped pay to educate," she said. "You built it at least in part getting your goods to market on roads all of us helped pay for. You built it at least in part with the protection of firefighters and police officers all over the country."
She said her wealth tax, with the possibility of revenue for universal childcare, tuition-free college and student debt relief, was ultimately a question of values. "For me, I value the next generation," she said to applause.
One member of that next generation, Helen Wang, 19, who drove more than an hour from Vermont with a friend, said Warren was her first-choice because other candidates were "not consistent." She liked her home-state senator, Sanders, but believed he was "hyping up" the size of his following. "I think Bernie has some problems with expanding his base," she said.
The hope of Wang, Mather and hundreds more in Peterborough on Monday afternoon is that Warren, with her "relatable" life story, her well-organized campaign and her future-oriented plans, is expanding her support as she speaks.
This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.
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