My colleague Sherin and I, along with Sherin’s friend Susan, drove up to Manchester tonight to try and participate in some of the Primary Night fun. We headed for the so-called “Center of New Hampshire,” which is not, despite its name, in the centre of New Hampshire, but is rather the large Holiday Inn convention centre in Manchester where the media is concentrated, and where John Kerry held his Primary Night rally.

We arrived just after 7:00 p.m. (the last polls close at 8:00 p.m.), and wandered around drinking it all in. Media were everywhere — BBC, ABC, Comcast, and CSPAN had studios well in evidence, and there were vast curtained off areas behind which who knows what media deeds were being done.

Eventually we found our way to the Kerry rally, and because of our early arrival I was able to partake of the free vegetables and dip on offer (the only free food of my entire Primary experience). Inside the main ballroom Kerry supporters milled about looking happy and content, and an ever-growing collection of TV crews — I counted 50 tripods by the time we left — pointed at the stage from the back of the room. In the corner a large-screen TV projected the local TV station’s coverage, which resulted in odd parallaxes where a reporter doing a stand-up from the media area would, in turn, be projected on the TV screen in the corner. 3D house of TV horrors.

Next we wandered over to the on-location studios of 96.9 FM Talk, a Boston-area talk-only radio station. Starting at 8:00 p.m., the station’s signature hosts Jay Severin, Margery Eagan and Jim Braude held a special primary-night broadcast. We ambled in and sat down and watched a couple of acts (they are all very talented talk-radio personalities, and it was interesting to see them work as a team). During a break Sherin and Susan went up to the broadcast table and snagged a T-shirt signed by Jay.

By the end of the second act of the radio show, it was clear that Kerry had won the night, and so we headed back to the Kerry rally in the ballroom, which by this time was jam-packed with people. One interesting aspect of all of the events I attended is that there is very strict screening at the door — not for guns, drugs, or alcohol, but rather for hidden signs that might be used to deflect or distract TV coverage from the candidate.

The place was so packed that we lasted only 10 minutes before we had to escape for air.

A little more wandering — including a surprise encounter with Margery Eagan in the hall — and we headed back off into the New Hampshire night.

Over the lunch hour today, I drove up from Dublin to Keene to the house of Nat Stout, who is a colleague here at Yankee, and active in the Dean campaign. Nat’s house was home to a “get out the vote” effort for Dean, and there were a gaggle of young Dean supporters from across America there on the phone, and coming and going to and from polling locations and strategic “visibility” locations where they could hold large Dean signs.

I spent about an hour at Nat’s, watching the action, sharing some pizza, and learning about what Nat called “the nitty gritty.” At 1:00 p.m., I taped a piece, by cell phone, with Matt Rainnie for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Main Street on my Primary experiences. And on the way back to Dublin, I swung by the polling location nearest to Nat’s house and took some pictures:

The Prince Edward Island deficit, CBC reports, was $83.3 million last year.

This is roughly $850 for each registered elector, and about $1,000 for each employed person.

As at the last budget, PEI’s debt was $1.16 billion. That’s about $11,000 per elector, and about $14,000 per employed person.

Our budget for this year requires about $90 million to pay interest on the debt.

It strikes me that I’ve never heard anyone in Prince Edward Island, politician or no, suggest any mechanism by which we’re going to pay this money back to the people we owe it to. It’s like a giant unspoken impossibility. That will go on forever.

Wesley Clark — he’s just “Wes” to you and me now that he’s a politician — appeared at a rally at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire this afternoon and I was there with bells on.

I have discovered the secret to successful primary rally attendance: arrive 45 minutes early. If you arrive 45 minutes early, you will (a) get a good parking space, and (b) get a good seat. If you don’t arrive early, you will (a) have to park 3 miles away, on the side of a road, and walk in sub-zero temperatures to the hall and (b) will probably not get in, as the fire inspector will have already closed the hall.

I arrived 45 minutes early, and, posing as a resident of New Hampshire, was shown to a good seat in the “special seats we’ve received for residents” section, 6 or 7 rows back from the dais.

This was the most barnburner of a rally I’ve attended here so far — tremendous rah-rah-rah, stomp-stomp-stomp and military-style marching chants. As one person said to an organizer on the way out “you guys have a great advance team!”

The “very special guests” supporting Clark included actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, former New York Mayor David Dinkins, Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Gov. Jim Hodges (SC), Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR), and Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio.

Plenty of pictures here, including many of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen!

Ross spoke first, followed by Coleman, who then introduced Danson and Steenburgen. Steenburgen was there, she explained, because her mother and Clark’s used to work in the same bank in Little Rock. Danson, presumably, was there because he’s married to Steenburgen.

After brief, well-spoken and witty remarks from Dinkins and Rangel, there was a confusing and tear-jerking-attempting speech by Gail Kruzel, whose husband, a colleague of Clark’s, was killed in the Balkans. Clark gave her his wedding ring at his funeral. Touching, and more than a little awkward.

Clark then bounded to the stage, and spoke for 45 minutes on a variety of issues, concentrating on “leadership” in its various incarnations. Lots of rah-ra-rah. Lots of “George Bush is in for a lickin’.” Some talk of issues, with few specifics. A few token questions at the end. More stomping. And then the end.

The audience was decidely different from Dean on Friday (Birkenstocks and Apple Cider) and Kerry on Saturday (Firemen and Organized Labor): Clark appears to attract the “khaki-wearing vice-principal” demographic, along with its related “khaki-wearing math teacher” strain. There were also plenty of balding geeky types, and good dose of “looking for leaderhip intellectual suburbanites”.

It was weird sitting besides otherwise rational people, having substantive policy discussions, and then only minutes later, to have them break out into paroxysms of “We Want Clark,” waving their signs, and bouncing their balloons.

I’m taking tomorrow off to do some real work; up to Manchester on Tuesday night for the results.

Here are my photos of the John Kerry hockey game, yesterday at the JFK Coliseum in Manchester, NH.

On my way home last night from the Dean rally in Keene, NH, I was thinking about how the event compared to the political rallies I’d seen in Canada. Then I realized that, since Trudeau in 1980 in Hamilton.

The rally was held in the large 1,100-seat auditorium of Keene Middle School. The hall was full — every seat taken — and there was a crowd in the cafeteria watching on closed-circuit television. Fortunately, I arrived around 6:00 p.m., so I was able to get a seat.

I took several photos of the event; I was some distance from the stage, and the light was poor (to say nothing of my skills as a photographer), so the photos are best seem as being of “to show I was there” quality only. Dean’s own website has much better photos.

Things got started around 7:15 p.m. The Mayor of Keene, Michael Blastos, came on stage, welcomed the crowd, and the introduced a young woman who would sing the national anthem. Americans still sing their national anthem before events, apparently. Although I hold a U.S. passport, short of a hockey game on television, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it sung live. And, truth be told, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was about — lots of phrases about the flag still being there, and things burning down, etc. To avoid being kicked out as a Canadian infiltrator, I mouthed the words as best I could.

Mayor Blastos then introduced the actor and director Rob Reiner. Reiner spoke for about 5 minutes about why he supports Dean, concentrating on Dean’s support for and interest in early childhood education and “first start” programs. He then introduced Dean.

After hearing Dean speak for almost an hour, I certainly understand his appeal. He is a compelling speaker, and is obviously smart and imaginative. He spoke without notes on topics ranging from health care to education to defense. And, somehow, he managed to come across as honest and forthright in a way that didn’t make it seem like he was trying to convince us that he was.

The formal speech wound down about 8:15; after that there was 30 minutes of questions from the audience. When things finally ended for the night, about 9:00 p.m., Dean headed downstairs to the cafeteria overflow room where he spent 15 minutes answering questions.

And then we all headed off into the cold, cold New Hampshire night.

I’ll be at the Dean in Keene rally tonight in Keene, NH. The event will be webcast.

“South,” is, of course, a relative term. I’m not going where it’s warm.

I’m off first thing tomorrow morning for Boston, and then from there up into southern New Hampshire to work with my colleagues at Yankee for the week.

As it’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary week, I’ll also be playing “Primary tourist.” Tentative plans are for a Dean rally tomorrow night in Keene, a hockey game with John Kerry on Saturday followed by a Lieberman Town Hall, and a John Edwards rally on Sunday night. I think I’ll be spending Primary Tuesday in and around various places in Manchester.

See you on the flip side…