LEBANON — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg drew more than 900 people to Lebanon High School on Saturday afternoon and, fresh off a top showing in Iowa, touted his ability to draw support in key Midwest states.
A few miles north in Hanover, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., sought to distinguish herself as an experienced, electable alternative to fellow U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who also finished at the top in Iowa and continues to lead in polls heading into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Buttigieg, who a new CNN 2020 New Hampshire Primary Poll showed has leaped into second place in New Hampshire with 21% support, 7 percentage points behind Sanders, earlier also made a last-minute stop at Dartmouth College. In Lebanon, he noted that the crowds greeting him these days are a far cry from his start a year ago.
“We’d visit a cafe and I was happy if a couple of dozen people showed up,” said Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who served as a Navy officer in Afghanistan. “Then through the summer, as the crowds grew bigger, you let me know in your New Hampshire way that I was getting somewhere.”
His rise prompted several candidates, including Klobuchar, to question Buttigieg’s political and governing experience during a nationally televised debate at Saint Anselm College on Friday night.
While making no specific reference to the debate, Buttigieg in Lebanon noted that his Rust Belt experience equips him to identify with and reach middle- and working-class voters in swing states that President Donald Trump won in 2016, particularly the Midwest, “who feel completely left behind by the ways of Washington.”
Buttigieg cited examples of other such people whom he’s met around New Hampshire, among them a Berlin man standing in line behind a woman who didn’t have enough cash to pay her share of her prescription.
“He told me, ‘I spotted her five bucks, but I don’t know what she’s going to do the next time,’ ” Buttigieg recalled, before adding that along with Granite Staters of voting age, he’s been hearing “the voices of those not yet old enough to vote,” among them a 14-year-old girl who told him she was writing her will in case she died in a school shooting.
Speaking to more than 350 people at Dartmouth’s Alumni Hall, Klobuchar mixed humor with personal stories of her family background — her grandfather was an iron ore miner who saved money in a coffee can to help send Klobuchar’s father to community college — and said it was time for a “decency check” on Trump’s excesses.
“I know you and I will fight for you. That’s what this election is about,” said Klobuchar, who was at 5% in the new CNN poll. “The Midwest is not flyover country to me. I live there.”
She reiterated what she said in the debate Friday night: that Sanders, a self-described socialist, is too liberal to help Democrats win in November.
“Bernie and I are friends, I appreciate his service, but I don’t think he should lead the ticket,” she said.
Rather than Medicare for All, Klobuchar said she favors building on the Affordable Care Act, including a public option; changing federal law to go after high pricing by pharmaceutical companies; and addressing such issues as long-term care.
She also said that the ACA, which Trump wants to scrap, polls higher than does Trump himself. “You will see that I am someone who is tough enough to take this guy on, and I’m someone who has the ideas and the experience to put them into action,” she said. “All I need is your vote.”
Among the attendees at her speech was Tom Barton, a former Trump supporter from Washington, N.H., who now backs Klobuchar.
“Amy is more of a moderate. She seems to have a plan to pay for everything she is proposing,” said Barton, 62, a Claremont native who is in the timber harvesting business.
Joanne Scobie, a retired children’s librarian from West Lebanon, said she has seen Klobuchar speak three times and is clearly in her camp.
“I like her clarity, her grasp of issues, her sense of humor,” Scobie said. “And actually, her confidence. I think she is dynamite.”
Buttigieg drew more than 325 people to his appearance at Dartmouth’s Top of the Hop about two hours before Klobuchar’s rally. Griffin Kozlow, a first-year Dartmouth student from Michigan, saw both Klobuchar and Buttigieg speak and said he leaned more toward Buttigieg, saying he liked his more progressive policies and potentially broader appeal.
“I think they are both two of the best debaters and speakers that we have, except I think he has the edge on that, in my opinion,” said Kozlow.
Dartmouth senior Iris Wang, who attended the Buttigieg event at Dartmouth, said that Buttigieg reinforced the strong impression he’d already made with her.
“I really believe in him,” said Wang, who hails from San Francisco. “What I’ve realized is that the Democratic Party wins when it has charismatic, bold, visionary leaders. Think Obama. Think JFK. Think (Bill) Clinton, and I think he really follows in that vein.”
Upper Valley voters on Sunday will see more campaigning from other top candidates, with Sanders making stops in Hanover and Claremont and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in Lebanon. Andrew Yang will also be in Claremont and Hanover.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com. John Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews .com.