Yesterday morning I rolled off the futon in my brother-in-law's basement in Hanover,NH and prepared to go canvasing. We gave Fiona the day off so she could play with her cousins and got a little bit of a late start as we worked out the play schedule. We had been told to help at the Claremont campaign office. The office manager was glad to see us. He's a young guy from North Carolina fully of energy and working hard to deliver as many votes for Edwards as possible. Like in Iowa, the Edwards campaign is being outspent something like five to one. Dan said that the Hillary campaign had five staffers covering Sullivan county and had recently brought in a bus and two fifteen people vans full of volunteers. Outside, there were Hillary and Obama supporters doing visibility. Sullivan County looked like it might be a hard place to canvas.

Kim's New Hampshire relatives call Claremont 'Brick City' because of all the old brick mills in town. Would the message of a son of a mill worker resonate in an area where so many mills have been closed? Dan asked us to go canvas in Newport. Newport is the county seat of Sullivan County. According to ZipSkinny, a great site that extracts census data based on zipcodes, Newport (03773), has a population of 7649. The median income is $38,573. .4%, or about 30 people, have incomes over $200,000.

As we went door to door, we met a mother with a bad back worried about about how she would provide for her daughter, a man fighting jaundice worried about his health care, and people concerned simply about getting by as their income slipped further and further behind. We met people that desperately need someone that will fight hard for them against the corporate special interests. There were a lot of people still undecided and we had some great discussions.