By David A. Fahrenthold
The Washington Post
Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, right, and his wife, Mary Kaye, are greeted by Bill Higgins and his goat, Izak, in Dover, N.H. Huntsman was campaigning Monday in advance of next week's primary. (Matt Rourke, The Associated Press )
MANCHESTER, N.H. ? What do you learn when you try to meet every single Republican presidential candidate in person?
You learn that Texas Rep. Ron Paul is awful at small talk. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a ham, breaking into funny voices and goofy faces. And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is .?.?. not like that at all.
"Like talking to your doctor," one voter remembered.
And, as it turns out, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is surprisingly calm after he has been bitten by a goat.
The voters who attempt this feat during primary season, trying to meet every serious candidate, preferably more than once, are the earnest heart of this politics-obsessed state. They make New Hampshire what New Hampshire is: a place where the contest to lead a nation of 312 million takes on the intimacy of a junior high student council race.
But during this chaotic primary system, even some of these people ? the Platonic ideal of the American voter, close enough to look each candidate in the eye ? are still struggling to make a choice.
And so, one night this week, Andy and Betsie Bridge decided they couldn't make up their minds until they had gone to see former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the flesh.
For the third time.
"You never know. We could always change our minds," Betsie said. She had been leaning toward Paul but wanted to hear Gingrich go through his arguments again.
"Don't you think you should go and hear him?" Andy said.
The Republican candidates' long courtship of New Hampshire culminates Tuesday with the state's first-in-the-nation primary. Over the past year, the major candidates have made 124 different trips here, according to the New Hampshire radio station WMUR. Romney leads with 31.
Their events started with small coffees and dinners last winter and built to big, stage-managed rallies this week. By now, it's easy to lose track of how many potential future presidents you've met.
"I've seen Rick Perry, I think, four times. Might have been five times," said Spec Bowers, a New Hampshire state legislator, a Republican and innkeeper from Sunapee. "Rick Santorum, I saw him in a group of maybe half a dozen people. That's probably a half-hour session. So, it's like talking to your next-door neighbor."
Bowers' list went on. Former pizza executive Herman Cain. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann twice. Paul and Gingrich at least three times apiece. And other candidates whom nobody has heard of: the rare and hard-to-collect specimens who fill out the 2012 complete set.
"Well, there's a guy who calls himself 'Vermin Supreme,' " Bowers said. "He was dressed in some crazy costume. At first glance, you might think it's a hat. Then you looked closely and you realized that it was a long boot that he wore on his head.
"I've seen him at least three times."
Never got a good sense of his platform.
Voters who get within touching distance see things that other people don't. An unexpected bulk under that suit. Clunky orthopedic shoes. Wrinkles. And the irregular edges of an actual personality, revealed by raw fatigue or a rare sense that no one is watching.
"He's just a fun guy," Steve Cunningham, a state legislator and county GOP chairman, said of Perry. "After he talks to you a little bit, he'll be a little silly."
Perry cracked Cunningham up with exaggerated faces, full-body impressions and a funny voice, something like Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo."
"If there was just a neighbor that you'd like to go fishing with, or like to go out for pizza and beer with, it's him," Cunningham said.
His second-favorite candidate was Santorum.
"Would I enjoy being at a Christmas party and talking to him? Absolutely," Cunningham said. A fishing trip, not so much.
Di Lothrop, a local GOP official in Nashua, said she felt Gingrich was not very personable when she met him: He talked to her like a boss, not a friend. One thing she did like, though: Gingrich sought to make sure his wife, Callista, was included in conversations.
Included? How so?
"He'd look over at her, and he'd say, 'My wife and I feel .?.?.,' " and then make his point, Lothrop said. "No one asking for her opinion. But he knew that she was with him."
In Dover, Bill Higgins also likes to meet the candidates who pass through. He also likes to bring a goat. This had not been a problem before. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., petted his previous goat, the late Binx, in the last primary season. This time, the new goat, Izak, nuzzled Gingrich without incident.
Then Higgins met Huntsman.
"He just turned around and nip-nip-nip," Higgins, 59, recalled Thursday, making a noise like the sound of a goat biting a presidential candidate on the knee.
"Just sampling him," said Higgins' roommate, Judy Hammond.
Huntsman was not hurt, and he reacted with good cheer. Now there's a Huntsman sign outside Higgins' house (although Hammond is still undecided). Only in New Hampshire, Higgins said.
Source: http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19685168?source=rss
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