New Hampshire Primary coverage
While other media chased candidates, we visited the spots and people that make up the first in the nation state.
The town in New Hampshire most candidates forgot
PITTSBURG, N.H.—At the northernmost tip of New Hampshire, the tiny town of Pittsburg is more likely to get mobbed by snowmobile enthusiasts than presidential candidates.
Of the hundreds of visits made by White House hopefuls to the state over the last nine months or so, this town of about 800 people known for its beautiful lakes, trails and fly fishing, has been largely ignored. The lone presidential candidate who paid Pittsburg a visit—South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham—isn’t even running anymore.
Read the full story as it ran on Boston.com here.
The bluest town in New Hampshire chooses a candidate
LYME, N.H. – While the rest of New Hampshire argues over Rubio versus Trump versus Cruz versus Kasich, this Connecticut River hamlet thinks mostly in blue.
Hillary or Bernie? That’s the question most of Lyme’s 1,200 or so voters will mull as they stand in the ballot box.
Whoever the Democratic nominee is, it’s a sure bet that they’ll win Lyme come November. Judging by the 2012 election results, Lyme is the bluest town in New Hampshire. President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney with a whopping 76 percent of the vote here four years ago.
Read the full story as it ran on Boston.com here.
A tiny New Hampshire town retakes a tradition: voting at midnight
MILLSFIELD, N.H.—It was all over in 4 minutes and 20 seconds.
The 14 voters of Millsfield cast their ballots at midnight. Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton won. And for the first time in 56 years, Millsfield voters again became among the first of the first in the nation to vote for president.
The voters who gathered in this wood-paneled bar aren’t the only ones who cast ballots while most of New Hampshire slept. Just up the road, in Dixville Notch, nine people voted at midnight, as they have for decades. And further south, in Hart’s Location—an actual incorporated town, unlike its midnight voting sisters—voters cast their ballots, too.
It seems not everyone knows about the traditions, though. Earlier Monday, when a campaign worker called Millsfield resident Charles Sheldon asking if he’d be voting Tuesday, he said yes—at midnight.
The campaign worker hung up.
“I think she was dumbfounded,” Sheldon said.
At the Log Haven restaurant on Rt. 26, Tuesday’s polling place, the atmosphere was more reunion than civic duty. Someone brought in a tray of buttery cookies. A spread of sandwiches and carafes of coffee were for the taking. The sheriff’s deputies overseeing the proceedings swapped stories with the voters.
There were 21 votes cast in all—14 in person and seven by absentee.
While the news stations broadcasted live from Dixville Notch—where the reporters outnumbered the voters—Millsfield was decidedly more intimate.
Nobody in Millsfield is quite sure when or why their predecessors started voting at midnight for a handful of elections and then abruptly stopped. The only record of the voting is a November 1952 Time magazine article detailing the seven voters who cast ballots in a woman’s living room after the clock struck 12.
“It allows us to relive some of our history,” said Wayne Urso, a town selectman and organizer of the midnight vote.
Read the full story as it ran on Boston.com here.
Photo by Jean Nagy
In northern Trump country, a political agnostic mulls his vote
PITTSBURG, N.H.—In this first-in-the-nation primary state, you can’t get much further north than Steve Ellis’ property.
Giving directions, he specifies: His street is about the last one before the electricity stops.
Ellis is technically an outsider—a flatlander, they’re called—who relocated here in 2008 from Connecticut to reside on land he owned along a lake.
“If you’re an avid fly fisherman like I am and a country guy,” he said, “this is the place to be.”
Now 69, the former insurance employee has coached a state championship baseball team and serves as the chair of the board of selectmen. He’s building a massive log cabin that he calls his dream home.
He understands why his friends who retired to sunnier, warmer climates think he’s a little crazy for heading north instead of south. But it doesn’t bother him much.
“This is God’s country,” he said.
Read the full story as it ran on Boston.com here.