LEBANON — Options abounded for area voters interested in seeing presidential candidates in person — and willing to contend with crowds — on Saturday. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg conducted a town hall event at Lebanon Middle School as part of a four-day bus tour through New Hampshire. Former Vice President Joe Biden rallied voters at Colby-Sawyer College in New London. And Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, campaigned in downtown Lebanon.
More than 1,300 people, the Buttigieg campaign’s largest crowd yet in New Hampshire, squeezed into the middle school gym to see the candidate. That’s nearly twice what organizers were expecting, said Jeanne Thompson, a campaign volunteer from Meriden.
In a succinct speech followed by a short question-and-answer session, Buttigieg emphasized his vision of a unified America, contending that some of the nation’s most pressing problems can be solved through commonsense, collaborative approaches.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that unifying the American people is thinking small,” Buttigieg said, echoing themes he’s articulated at past campaign events. “There’s a strong American majority to get things done.”
Solving climate change, for example, will require inviting everyone from auto workers to farmers to help them understand their role in crafting a solution, Buttigieg told the crowd.
“American agriculture can lead the way on this. Let them know: Not only do we respect them, but we need them,” he said.
Intergenerational alliances can also be a force against powerful groups standing in the way of progress, Buttigieg said. On gun violence, for example, young people are leading the way. “And I see their parents and their grandparents at their side, cheering them on,” he said.
With the New Hampshire primary just three months away and the impeachment inquiry consuming Congress, Buttigieg’s message of measured progress and reconciliation seemed to resonate with potential voters who attended the event.
“It’s going to come down to whoever’s going to beat Trump,” said Matt Zayatz, 40, who lives in Lebanon and works at the Hood Museum.
Though he’s still undecided, Zayatz, who has been perfecting his Trump impersonation over the past three years, is concerned that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren may be too radical to win over the moderate voters needed to defeat Trump.
“I like (Buttigieg) because he’s moderate, but not Hillary Clinton moderate,” Zayatz said.
Susan Boles, who lives in Wilder and works as a VA nurse, agreed that though Buttigieg lags in the polls, he’s ultimately more electable than Warren and Sanders.
“I also feel like he’s moral and trustworthy and honest,” she said. “He’s refreshing.”
Defeating Trump was also on the mind in Biden’s audience, as event attendee Maralyn Doyle waited to hear Biden in Colby-Sawyer’s Ware Student Center along with several hundred other people on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m so disgusted with what’s going on in Washington,” said Doyle, 73, of Newbury, N.H. “I’d like to go back … to when you had a president you could look up to. I’d like the country to be respected again.”
Doyle said she’d already attended campaign events for Buttigieg and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, and she plans to see Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren next week. She hasn’t decided on a candidate yet, but she likes Biden’s credentials.
“He’s got a history. He’s not out of the blue,” said Doyle, a retired state worker. “I like that he’s got some important foreign relations experience.”
Biden himself highlighted his foreign relations experience and extensive resume in a leisurely paced town hall event, while at the same time underscoring his working-class roots and track record of winning over red-state voters.
“The next president is going to have to immediately command the world stage,” said Biden, who officially filed his paperwork for the presidential primary on Friday and whose wife, Jill, accompanied him to New Hampshire to canvass in Lebanon on Saturday. “The only thing that I have more experience than every single person running for this office combined is foreign policy.”
Along with regaining credibility and influence on the world stage, the country needs to get its priorities straight at home, Biden said. Corporations need to fairly reward their workers rather than funneling their profits to shareholders, he said.
After speaking to the crowd in his usual strolling, storytelling manner, Biden took several questions from the audience on issues ranging from education funding to sexual harassment to his health care plan. Criticizing the staggering price tag that would come from a “Medicare for All” plan like one Warren has proposed, he said an expansion of Obamacare would be equally effective with a much more palatable cost.
“What I propose is taking Obamacare and making it ‘Bidencare’ by providing a public option,” he said.
One audience member asked Biden what his criteria would be for choosing a vice president. He said he would seek someone with whom he agreed on key principles, who could make up for his weaknesses and whom he fully trusted.
“Preferably a woman,” he said.
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.