Road to the Whitehouse

by the way

2008-01-06T07:45:00.001-05:00

St. Petersburg Times photojournalist Martha Rial was up here following some of us for a few days. Here's the slideshow...

fire!

2008-01-05T23:03:00.001-05:00

(sorry Aunt Cindy!)

Once we packed all our stuff up, Maggie, Laura D., Laura T. and I formed a line to pass our luggage out one of the windows; it was better than going back through those awful halls!

The four of us were all waiting around outside for the van to pull around when the Associated Press walked up and starting filming and interviewing us. I haven't seen it air yet, but I'm sure it will appear in some form as it sure sounded like a media-friendly sob story about a bunch of homeless students. Luckily, the hotel found us 10 rooms at another hotel about twenty minutes down the road, so we're safe and warm tonight. Our new hotel is actually in Massachusetts...at least I can add another state to my map!

Andrew

Once we got settled here at our new hotel around a quarter to five tonight, we all decided to eat dinner together and watch the debates since there was really no point in even trying to get to our campaigns so late in the day. It was a nice, relaxing evening after the craziness this week has been and I'm sure the next few days will be. We're staying in a Radisson and it's very nice. After we finished eating we were all hanging out in the hotel restaurant watching the debates and I ran out for a few minutes to get a new toothbrush out of the gift shop (mine smelled awful from all the smoke). I got back and sat down with everyone, and soon after they all surprised me by singing happy birthday and the restaurant staff brought out a piece of cake for me. It was really fun and so sweet of everyone. My day ended well despite all the chaos.

(Someone also paid my dinner check too, so whoever that was, THANK YOU!)

That's it for today. I have some catch up today for Thursday and yesterday (mostly yesterday) to do, which I'll try to put up here in the morning.

Night!

P.S. - Here are some local articles about the fire. I'll let you know if I find the AP video I was talking about...

WBZTV (Matt & Mr. McLauchlan are quoted here)
Nashua Telegraph
WMUR New Hampshire

fire!

2008-01-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

I'd have to say that this was one of the most bizarre days (and birthdays) of my entire life. We were in the middle of a special class meeting with Professor Scala, an instructor from the University of New Hampshire (we read his book and wrote a paper on it), when the fire alarm went off at our hotel. We ignored it for about 10-20 minutes because the hotel staff said nothing serious was wrong and they were taking care of it. Well, lets just say that something very serious was wrong and we quickly learned we needed to get out of the hotel. Apparently a fire started in the boiler room of the hotel, and it took quite a while for the fire department to get it put out.There was really nothing we could do, so we left to go work at our campaign offices with Dr. McLauchlan and her husband keeping their ears open for any word about the situation and what exactly was going to happen with our living arrangements. By the time we dropped off the Manchester people and got to Concord (about an hour's drive), we got the call from Dr. McLauchlan that we were going to all have to come back and get our stuff out of the hotel.

Many of us were staying in rooms right below where the fire occurred and couldn't get access to our rooms to get our things out until after the fire department had conducted its investigation. We were told that everything was wet and the windows had been busted open, so we really had no idea what kind of shape our things were in. Maggie and I especially were worried because both of our laptops were in our room. Once we finally got in, it was a disaster in the hallways. There was black/grey muck everywhere and it was hard to breathe with the heavy smoke and chemical smell.Our rooms were okay, miraculously. The floors were wet, so anything on the floor was either soaked or ruined. I had a bunch of clean and dirty clothes on the floor, so all of those I had to re-wash and I also had a stack of books on the floor beside my bed, though only the bottom one was ruined. Other than that, all my stuff was fine (including my laptop), but smelled fiercely of smoke.

Once we packed all our stuff up, Maggie, Laura D., Laura T. and I formed a line to pass our luggage out one of the windows; it was better than going back through those awful halls!The four of us were all waiting around outside for the van to pull around when the Associated Press walked up and starting filming and interviewing us. I haven't seen it air yet, but I'm sure it will appear in some form as it sure sounded like a media-friendly sob story about a bunch of homeless students. Luckily, the hotel found us 10 rooms at another hotel about twenty minutes down the road, so we're safe and warm tonight. Our new hotel is actually in Massachusetts...at least I can add another state to my map!

Once we got settled here at our new hotel around a quarter to five tonight, we all decided to eat dinner together and watch the debates since there was really no point in even trying to get to our campaigns so late in the day. It was a nice, relaxing evening after the craziness this week has been and I'm sure the next few days will be. We're staying in a Radisson and it's very nice. After we finished eating we were all hanging out in the hotel restaurant watching the debates and I ran out for a few minutes to get a new toothbrush out of the gift shop (mine smelled awful from all the smoke). I got back and sat down with everyone, and soon after they all surprised me by singing happy birthday and the restaurant staff brought out a piece of cake for me. It was really fun and so sweet of everyone. My day ended well despite all the chaos.(That's it for today. I have some catch up today for Thursday and yesterday (mostly yesterday) to do, which I'll try to put up here in the morning.

Night!

P.S. - Here are some local articles about the fire. I'll let you know if I find the AP video I was talking about...
WBZTV (Matt & Mr. McLauchlan are quoted here)
Nashua Telegraph
WMUR New Hampshire

day 4

2008-01-03T01:01:00.000-05:00

This morning we visited the state library and the New Hampshire Republican & Democratic party chairs. It was an informative trip, I especially enjoyed our meetings with Republican chairman Fergus Collins and Democratic chairman Raymond Buckley, and I took lots of pictures!

...outside the state library...

...the State Library...

...inside...

Upstairs in the State Library we walked through a great exhibit about past New Hampshire primaries.

Deb posing while Damaris shoots the photo...

Laura admired the Kennedy cutout. :)

...Democratic party offices...

...waiting to meet with Raymond Buckley...

Matt, Ray Buckley, Russell, and Dr. McLauchlan

...Republican party offices...

Emilio & Fergus Collins, party chair...

Emilio, Dr. McLauchlan, & Fergus Collins

Following our field trip to Concord, we all dispersed to our respective campaign offices. I did quite a bit of phone banking, but more and more people are coming to volunteer at the office and it's fun to see the office grow as we draw closer to Iowa. Governor Huckabee was on Leno tonight, and I thought he did really well. He does really well with a live audience and I really think he enjoys being challenged and questioned on his positions. He's very comfortable with himself.

That's it for tonight! More tomorrow...

day three

2008-01-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a short blog because I'm tired and I have work to do, but I just wanted to give you all a rundown of my day.

It started out this morning with a class meeting listening to Professor David Redlawsk from the University of Iowa tell us all about the Iowa caucuses via speaker phone. It was interesting to hear all the ins and outs of the caucuses and the actual logistics behind them. At right are Dr. McLauchlan and Debbie listening in.

Following, we left immediately for our campaigns. I got dropped off in

Manchester today (instead of Concord) because we were going to be out of the office working on a huge mailer at a supporter's house a few towns away. I had some fun waiting in the Bridge Cafe (pictured at left) on Elm St., and thank goodness it was open because nothing else was at 10 a.m. on New Years Day.

It started snowing around 11 a.m., which you can see in the picture, and didn't stop until late afternoon. It was so cold!

I think what I really enjoyed about the campaign today, despite stuffing thirty envelopes a minute for eight hours, was getting to know EVERYONE on the campaign. With everyone sitting on the table doing the same task for so long, conversation is always flowing and it was a nice introduction. Today was much better than yesterday by far.

I got back to the hotel around 9:15 tonight, and now I really need to get some other homework done. Have a wonderful night!

...Elm St., Manchester, with snow falling...

...day two in photos...

2007-12-31T23:54:00.001-05:00

Joel attempting to build a snowman.

The fruits of his effort.

Joel, Laura, and Adam tonight at our class dinner.

Andrew with the glow-in-the-dark glasses we all got from Dr. McLauchlan.

Dr. McLauchlan!

And, just for fun, here's a video that I took while we trying to take a group picture in the dark with our glowing glasses. We were all crammed in Paul and Brandon's hotel room, and though we certainly tried, the picture didn't turn out very well so we gave up on the dark shot.

...on the road...again.

2007-12-31T23:24:00.001-05:00

the picturesque scene outside of the Nashua Obama headquarters

Today was an unusual day. After meeting briefly as a class over breakfast, we headed out around 9:00 a.m. to go to our campaigns. Because it was snowing and Dr. McLauchlan wanted everyone to see everyone else's campaign offices, it took a looooong time for me to get to my office headquarters. We're staying in Nashua and most everyone's campaign's are in town, but mine is about an hour away in Concord, along with Brandon and Shadi's. In between Nashua and Concord are the Manchester offices, so obviously we did Nashua people, Manchester, then Concord.

I was finally dropped off around 3:30 p.m., to a very quiet campaign office. Their were about 5 staffers -Cassidy, Abby, Chris, Perklis, and Rick (I think it was Rick...!)- in the office and no other volunteers, but at least I had things to do. I did phone banking for about 45 minutes and then helped some of the staffers out with two mailers. I only worked for about 2 and half hours because most people closed early due to New Year's Eve.

Tomorrow I'm going to be working in Milford with Cassidy and the rest of the gang on a 20,000 piece mailer. I'm looking forward to it because it's not phones! :P I don't mind doing phones at all, but it's definitely not at the top of my list of fun things to do around a campaign.

Hopefully my experience will get better as time goes on. I know a lot of my classmates had tons of fun meeting people and working on their campaigns, so helpful things will get more exciting over the next few days, especially after Iowa.

The tremendous amount of car riding that I participated in today did have some benefit. I had some great conversations with my classmates, which I really enjoyed, and I also got to know a bit more about some of them; I like hearing people's stories.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. I'll be posting another photo blog in a few minutes...

Until tomorrow then!

...day one in photos...

2007-12-30T21:47:00.001-05:00

...meeting at TIA with Dr. McLauchlan and her daughter, Peggy, before our flight...

...my roommate, Maggie...

...Adam and Steve, boarding...

...New Hampshire from the air...

...Team Romney: Scott, George, and Laura...

...Damaris...

...New Hampshire!

...Emilio, outside waiting for the vans...

...outside our hotel, Damaris loves the snow...

...Andrew and Deb...

...Shadi...

...camping out in the lobby waiting for our room keys...

That's it for now! More tomorrow...

...here in New Hampshire...

2007-12-30T20:06:00.000-05:00

We arrived here in New Hampshire this morning at 11:20 a.m., about a half an hour early. Dr. McLauchlan and Brandon left to get the vans and the rest of us got a little more familiar with each other in the food court. One of the more prominent things I was nervous about was the fact that I really didn't know anyone on the trip all that well, but we had a lot of fun today and I can see that I had no reason to worry.

Once we got to the hotel we quickly checked in (after marveling at the snow, that is) and settled our things. We took a trip to Wal Mart, which amply reinforced the lovely wonder that is no sales tax, and stocked up on "toasty toes" and snack food. Other than that, we just had some dinner and now have the night to get prepared for the rest of this week. Tomorrow the real fun begins!

Okay, now down to business...

I first heard about Mike Huckabee around 8 months ago through my friend's blog. The post peaked my interest, so I clicked around online for more info. I liked what I saw, but I didn't really think he had a chance so I let it slide from my mind. Fast forward to learning about this trip a few months ago. With over a dozen candidates to pick from, I couldn't find anyone I identified with as much as Huckabee, so I decided to work for him anyway and enjoy the experience on a smaller campaign. Obviously, things have changed in the past two months.

Ultimately I like Mike Huckabee because he seems the most straightforward and open of all the candidates. Clearly, should I get the chance to meet him, I'll be able to gauge this in person, but for now I'm happy with what I've seen and read. He handles tough issues and questions with deft and skill; he isn't contrived. Out of all the Republican candidates, he is most attuned to the needs of middle class families. Click here to learn more about his policies and positions.

...pre-trip thoughts...

2007-12-29T23:44:00.001-05:00

Bright and early tomorrow morning we will be heading out for the icy cold of New Hampshire! I have been anticipating this trip for months with great excitement, yet I'm also mildly nervous about how these next ten days are going to be brought to life, or shall I say what exactly they will bring to life.

I've read and heard quite a bit in preparation for this course, whether it's about the primary itself, the candidates, or just the weather. My context is forming, but it's not very clear; I suppose the fun part is getting up there and seeing what of my context can be pushed around, thrown out, re-inserted and created.

Tomorrow I'll be sure to fill in what gaps I can so far, and also let you in on some of the reasons why I chose to intern for Mike Huckabee's campaign. In the meantime, be sure to look at the links provided on the right to Mike Huckabee's website and other news sites with information on his campaign. Further, I've linked all my classmates blogs on the lower right and our course website, Road to the Whitehouse, is listed in the "Relevant Links" section.

More to follow...