Beth Todgham's blog

The manager of the Center of New Hampshire, the state's largest hotel in Manchester, said in a C-SPAN interview the other day that he expects to start receiving inquires about the next New Hampshire Primary in about six months.

For those watching the action on tv the past couple of days, the Center played home to the Kerry campaign party last night and was the headquarters for NBC News since they rolled into the state last week.

Primary Day checklist:
1. Answer questions from Washington Post reporter doing a follow-up story on where I stand the day before the primary (my husband and I had been part of a story for their on-line edition early in the primary process)
2. Remind my 18-year-old daughter to vote today.
3. Set up VCR to tape the New Hampshire Primary edition of the Daily Show tonight.
4. Make sure the answering machine is clear of messages before leaving for work -- knowing it will be full of reminders to vote from all the campaigns when you return this afternoon.

Sunday was definitely "decision day" for many New Hampshire voters. You could see it in the streams of people who attended the variety of town hall meetings and rallys held by candidates throughout the state.

We started our day at the open house for Edwards. We thought he was going to be there, but instead Glenn Close served as his spokesperson. She showed a quiet commitment to the candidate and was very comfortable with deferring to his statewide campaign manager in the policy areas where she didn't know the answers. It was a personal decision on her part to support Edwards.

It's crunch time in New Hampshire. Just take a look at the candidate's schedules and you'll see how much ground they've commited to cover in the next two days. It's daunting.

And also very difficult to decide which campaign and it's events you want to go to. The invitations were coming in hot and heavy throughout yesterday. The Edwards people would like us to join he and Glen Close at a house party at 10:30 this morning; there's an Edwards Rally at a junior high school at noon.

I gained some respect for the Doctors Dean last night. Not enough to sway my vote in his direction next Tuesday, but after watching them together with Diane Sawyer last night, I can respect the balance that he and his wife have struck in the their lives and the pursuit of their own professional dreams.

I've been guilty of a few sly comments myself regarding her lack of commitment to her husband's presidential bid; but support can come in different ways and I found her commitment to career and family one I could agree with.

Did Joe Lieberman get a boost yesterday when The Union Leader ran a front page editorial endorsing his campaign?

I had posed the question of a Union Leader endorsement in the Democratic Primary on Sunday, when our local paper, The Telegraph, endorsed John Kerry. I wondered out loud whether an endorsement by the newspaper famous for making Ed Muskie cry would help or hurt a Democrat working to drum up voters in next Tuesday's primary.

This is going to be short this morning; I'm running kind of late. I stayed up watching the Iowa caucuses on CSPAN last night and slept in later than I should have.

I have to admit, I'm a little jealous of the process they enjoy in Iowa. Talk about hands-on politics. It makes just walking into a voting booth and casting your ballot kind of dull.

I could have named this entry "a sigh of relief" because that's what I felt when the results started coming in. I'm not jumping on the bandwagon here; I've always leaned towards Kerry from almost the very beginning and in recent weeks, John Edwards has been running a close second in my mind. Dean was never a consideration. I feel vindicated now that the voters of Iowa have reinforced what I've felt in my gut for some time.

We have a John Edwards sign on our lawn. It appeared last Friday. The dog was barking, but I didn't bother to find out why. Then, when I went out later, it was there.

I had mentioned that my husband and I had gone to see him the Friday before. My husband has been driving around with a Dean sticker on his car for months, but before we left the town hall meeting, he volunteered to work for Edwards at the polls on primary day.

There was a story in local newspaper the other day. One of its reporters had captured a couple from Vermont as they canvassed their neighborhood last weekend in support of Governor Dean.

The couple indicated that this was the first time they had ever done anything like this before. When asked what they had learned from the experience, they indicated that they were really surprised on the true level of interest New Hampshire residents pay to the primary process. They had expected signs of support for the various candidates wherever they went and strong support for one candidate or another at this stage of the game.

My husband has been driving around with a Dean sticker on the back of his car since late last fall. But when the opportunity came up last Friday night to go see John Edwards speak at a town hall meeting in Nashua, he jumped at the chance.

We went separately and he arrived just before me. The meeting was scheduled to start at 7pm. At 6:50, the room was still pretty empty and we had no problem getting front row seats. We questioned what kind of a crowd he was going to draw.