Welcome to the New Hampshire edition of
Crashing The States!
Today's entry takes us away from Connecticut and up to New Hampshire, where we met with Paul Hodes, who is challenging incumbent Republican Charlie Bass in the second district of New Hampshire--which encompasses most of the the geographic landmass of the state, from Massachussetts to the Canadian border:
(Image from the U.S. Census Bureau)
And while I'm at it--BONUS NEW HAMPSHIRE SPIDERS! All below the fold :-)
First and foremost, I feel very remiss about something in Connecticut that I omitted: namely, the fact that before we left, we met Tim Tagaris over drinks at a sports bar in New Haven on the outskirts of the Yale campus.
Like I wrote before--our project owes a big debt of gratitude to Tim for all the access he arranged for us--and he sat down with us for at least 90 minutes to discuss his role in the Connecticut Senate race.
I asked just about every single thing I could think of about the race and his involvement in it, mainly on an informational basis--and after a while, he insisted that I put him on the "seat of heat" and ask him challenging questions. Clearly, Tim isn't shy.
The most challenging thing I could figure out to ask Tim--a question that he rated as a 6 out of 10 on the heat scale--was what happened to the campaign immediately after the primary when it seemed like they took a month off. That was the toughest question I could come up with and still keep my sanity. I'm sure a "tougher questioner" might have come up with something along the lines of why Ned hates our troops, or why he himself does, or why he supports Communists, but I didn't have the heart to do that.
BUT ANYWAYS...ON TO NEW HAMPSHIRE!
We drove up Saturday night after our interview with Tim Tagaris to where we were staying in the 2nd district--a cabin on the outskirts of Wolfeboro. This cabin was somewhere around a century ago by the great-great-grandfather (I believe) of the blogger who currently uses it as his vacation home. It's quite a place.
The cabin sits on the shore of a lake, and has an absolutely spectacular view from the back porch.
We got up the next morning to make the drive to Concord--an hour away from Wolfeboro--to the headquarters of Paul Hodes. It was raining just about the whole time we were in New Hampshire--otherwise I would have stepped out to take more pictures. But I did get one shot of downtown looking out from the HQ office. From the looks of it, downtown Concord looks like a rather nice place:
Now, there's a very easy way for the office to entertain itself. There's a ping-pong table in the basement of the HQ. Paul and I played a recreational set while Reality Bites Back and Pelagos set up the cameras upstairs for an interview. And Paul Hodes kicked my ass, hands down. Now, I haven't played in a while, but it was still pretty damn ugly. After our interview, RBB and Pelagos did a turn on the ping-pong table themselves.
We sat down with Paul Hodes to discuss the state of his race and the role of the blogosphere in his campaign.
The most recent independent polls have shown Hodes down 46-36 as of September 22nd. A few things to consider, however: Paul just recently went out on the air with his television commercials on that same day, which will help to increase his name recognition. Further, that UNH poll may not have included the full extent of Bloggergate--the scandal in which Bass' policy director, Tad Furtado, resigned after admitting to being a concern troll on some local blogs that supported Bass (which we'll be getting to in a minute!). Also, it's hard to predict how the fallout from the Foley affair will affect this race.
Paul explained to us that while the people of New Hampshire think that things are going right in their state, they're extremely concerned by what's going on nationally. Because of that, Paul's strategy is to do everything he can to associate Bass with Bush's failed policies, especially on the war in Iraq, which is unpopular in New Hampshire, where 18 soldiers of that state have already lost their lives.
What's clear by contrast, however, is that Charlie Bass is doing everything he can to dissociate himself from Bush and the Republican party--with good reason. Just take a look at his website--which does not mention the word "Republican" anywhere in it and does everything it can to promote Bass as an "independent" voice.
All in all, I wouldn't be surprised if the next poll had Paul and Charlie substantially closer--especially since even as far back as August, Hodes' internals shows a much tighter race than the UNH polls, and Bass has not been releasing his internal numbers.
After our interview with Paul, we met with the three local bloggers who broke the "bloggergate" story referenced above: MissLaura, who blogs locally at Blue Granite; Republic Not Empire, who blogs locally at Yankee Doodler; and keener, who blogs at NH02 progressive.
We had a conversation with them about the origins of bloggergate and how influential they were with the campaign. To me, the most intereting part of the conversation was what they said concerning Google searches. Even though the three bloggers only put up their sites a couple of months ago--chiefly to support Hodes' petition to get on the netroots-endorsed list, since netroots endorsed candidates must have a cadre of local bloggers that support them--many google searches on Bass' policy positions had one of the three blogs in the top five results on the issues.
After a nice Japanese dinner in Concord (haven't had that in a while!) we made the drive back to Wolfeboro--where there was a nice fire in the fireplace.
But the best part about the cabin we stayed in? THE SPIDERS! YAY SPIDERS!
There were so many spiders at the cabin! Large spiders! I was very excited spider blogger. I found this guy (seems male to me, with developed emboli) scurrying across the floor. I'm not sure of the specific identification, especially without being able to see the eye pattern--there are so many wandering brown spiders around that I can't memorize what they all look like--though if I had to guess, I'd say it's a Lycosa carolinensis.
But far more interesting are the absolutely massive orbweavers. They were all up in rafters outside, so I couldn't really get a picture that would do these guys justice--but their abdomens alone were as big as a fingertip--and that makes for a large orbweaver. Not sure what the species is here.
At the moment, we're about to arrive in Indiana's 6th district for the Barry Welsh campaign. Be watching for a diary about our visit to NY-29, Eric Massa's district, in short order!