Primary season comes earlier

Jake Berry
Sentinel Staff

Political lore tells that once upon a time the presidential primary season arrived in the Monadnock Region only once the leaves began to change color.

But that was many moons — and many elections — ago.

In recent years, greater political and fundraising pressure have pushed up primary season dramatically, according to local political activists.

This year, presidential hopefuls began to visit the region as early as spring 2006 — almost two full years before the 2008 election — making this the longest primary season in N.H. history, activists said.

Elm City energy?

McCain hoping Keene stop is a start

Jake Berry
Sentinel Staff

Far from the bright lights of the national debate halls, presidential hopeful John McCain returned Wednesday to his favorite campaign stop: a small stage in front of an engaged audience.

The Republican senator from Arizona spent nearly two hours Wednesday evening answering questions from an energized crowd of nearly 200 at the Keene Country Club.

The event, his first in Keene during his 2008 campaign, is the same sort of open, face-to-face meeting that propelled him to a come-from-behind victory in the 2000 N.H. Primary, McCain said. And now, with his campaign sliding in the polls and short of money, he’s hoping it will boost him once again.

The candidate addressed a broad range of topics, from the war in Iraq to climate change to education to stem-cell research. And he ended the event the same way he began it — by highlighting the importance of New Hampshire in his 2008 campaign.

Down, not out

McCain admits mistakes, but hopes late run is in the cards

Jake Berry
Sentinel Staff

Presidential hopeful John McCain wants people to know that rumors of the death of his 2008 campaign have been greatly exaggerated.

Despite sagging poll numbers, recent personnel changes and a decimated bank account, McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona seeking the Republican nomination, isn’t considering dropping out of the presidential race — a race, he says, that has yet to begin.

“Look, it’s really early,” he said last week in an interview with The Sentinel. “I’d love to be ahead by 50 points (in the N.H. polls), but I can’t say that I’m alarmed. In September, when the real campaigning starts … that’s when people are going to start making up their minds.”

Locals press flesh with the Clintons

Zachary Chapman
Sentinel Staff

Betty A. Michaels of Keene doesn’t usually get a chance to mingle with former presidents during her daily lunch break.

But on Friday afternoon, Michaels, 61, pressed her way through a small but dense mass of people, ducked under a large black boom microphone and a few campaign signs, and found what she had been looking forward to for the past week: a firm handshake with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Michaels, who said she left her job to attend the rally with the mission of “making contact with the Clintons,” said the experience “sent a little thrill right through me.

“I was worried I wouldn’t be able to come,” she said. “But I’m definitely glad I did.”

Though other spectators didn’t get as close to the Clintons, many of the approximately 1,100 people who attended Friday’s rally for Hillary Clinton said they still relished the chance to hear a presidential candidate and a former president speak in person.

Clinton duo draws crowd

For many, it’s Hillary who’s the draw, not the former president

Freeman Klopott
Sentinel Staff

Bill who?

A two-term former president of the United States showed up at Alumni Field in Keene this morning, and many of the roughly 500 waiting there couldn’t have cared less.

For them, it was all about Hillary.

When former President William J. Clinton joined his wife, presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, on the campaign trail earlier this week, the idea was to add a little more appeal to her appearances. It turns out, at least in Keene, she didn’t need the boost.