inside the New Hampshire primaries

It’s late afternoon in Concord, NH, a cold and snowy February day. The regional headquarters of the Candidate 2000 Campaign is a spare function room in an empty church furnished with tables, folding chairs, and the necessary debris of any political office: street and ward maps, piles of literature, two-way radios, and an enormous coffeemaker. Nearly everyone in the room is under thirty, clean-cut, wearing jeans and parkas and sensible boots with cell phones tucked in pockets and cheeks bright from the wind. A portable stereo is playing REM; the television is showing CNN with the sound off; phones are ringing with the steady consistency of car alarms.

We’ve all been awake since well before dawn. I’m slumped on one chair, feet up on another, rubbing some life back into my chilled fingers and huddling next to an electric heater.

Across the room, Seth clicks off his cell phone and stands up. A campaign veteran at 27 and president of a Young Democrats chapter somewhere, he’s our regional coordinator, responsible for organizing two hundred strangers into a cohesive Special Forces unit with one goal: get out the vote for Candidate in Concord. I brace myself.

"Who hasn’t been out?"

We’ve all been out. We’re all still rubbing ice off our jeans. We glance at each other.

"Okay, Hampshire Homes is not voting. It’s a retirement community. We need those votes, people! I need two people to go out there right now." Pause. "Emily?"

I’m on my feet in a second, pulling on my coat and corralling my hair into a ponytail. Across the room, a tall blond man is zipping his parka and tossing a backpack over a shoulder. It doesn’t matter that I’m tired. We’re all tired. Political campaigns are like the military: you simply don’t refuse orders. And we need those votes.

We check the maps for directions, divide stacks of campaign literature between us, and head out into the cold. His name is Derek, he tells me as we bundle into my car. It hardly matters. We’ve just met and we’re already pals. Nothing creates a bond faster than busting ass for a shared cause.

"Okay. It’s on the left here. Seth says the polling place is inside the building, so we should spot it right away." I hang a left into the parking lot, wave to our supporters, park. We grab our stacks of literature and trot across the frozen tundra of the lot.

Outside the building, we pause to remove our campaign buttons and tuck our lit into inside pockets. The local polling place is in the building, and laws prohibit anything pushing a particular candidate – signs, buttons, etc. – within 100 feet.

"This looks wrong," Derek says, glancing at the building. "But let’s go."

Inside the front doors, a large foyer, reception desk, lobby area with chairs, signs pointing downstairs to the polls. The stairs to the rest of the building are cordoned off with velvet ropes. So is the hallway past the elevators. We take the stairs down to the polls. No way out but the way we came in. We go back to the lobby and stop, uncertain.

Getting people out to vote is a relatively simple process. Knock on their doors, introduce yourself, ask if they have voted, offer them a ride to the polls. Here, the polls are in the basement of the building. But where are the voters? One thing is clear: the management of this building has no intention of letting campaign workers near the residents.

Fuck them. Retirees are entitled to the same nagging we dish out to every other voter. We linger until the receptionist’s attention is occupied, then slip past the ropes and hustle down the hall. A quick right turn and set of stairs puts us in the employees-only section of the basement. Now we need stairways up to the main floors.

Footsteps approach behind us with a jingling of identification tags. Wherever the hell we are, we’re not supposed to be there. There is no time to hide. Derek yanks me out of the way, and we stand in front of a Coke machine, pretending to search for change in our pockets. The footsteps belong to a woman with hospital scrubs and squeaky white nurse shoes; she glances incuriously at us and disappears around a corner.

The trick to being in a place you’re not supposed to be and getting away with it is to look as though you belong there.

We allow ourselves a grin, slap hands, and follow the nurse’s path to the stairway. Above me, I can hear a door closing. Derek holds up two fingers to me, then five, and vaults up the steps two at a time.

I climb to the second floor and try the door. It’s locked. I climb to the third floor and try again. This time, the door yields easily, and I step out into what looks like a hospital ward. I can smell disinfectant and hear electronic beeping that sounds like cardiac monitors. The nurses’ station desk is directly in front of me, and Nurse Ratched is rapidly closing in from my left.

My pulse leaps. I’m caught. Act natural. Act as though I didn’t come in illegally through the basement, evading detection. I give her a sweet, earnest smile. In my jeans and ponytail, I look like a teenager. I am, in fact, trespassing, but I meet her with an innocent, open look. "Hi. I’m a volunteer for…" Think! "… the New Hampshire State Elections Department." Not bad. "I’m checking to make sure that everyone who wants to vote has gotten down to the polls." Yeah.

Nurse Ratched isn’t buying it. "You are not supposed to be here. However you got in, you can go back out the same way."

You got it. "Yes, ma’am, thank you."

I go back out to the stairs and sprint to the fourth floor, where I bump into Derek. He pulls me into a corner. "I got nailed by the Big Nurse on three," I tell him. "This is not a retirement community. This is a nursing home."

"I know. Seth didn’t say anything about bringing the voters’ oxygen tanks to the polls. All I saw on five were rooms with patients sleeping in them. I’m supposed to go into someone’s bedroom, wake him up, and say, ‘Hey man, I’m with Candidate for President, let’s get you and your colostomy bag down to the polls’?"

"Whatever it takes. Where do you suppose they keep the wheelchairs?"

We giggle together, then huddle seriously as a scrub-suited orderly jogs past us. The door opens on the third floor below us, then closes. Silence.

We’re already breaking the law. Why stop now?

We push the door open and peer into the fourth floor hallway. No nurses. Derek nudges me and points at a dayroom, where residents (or patients, really) are passing the time. I don’t see any oxygen tanks, so we go in. Derek takes a quick survey of the scene and approaches an elderly woman at the nearest table.

As if by magic, a nurse appears. And an orderly. And a "resident" in a wheelchair. I back away to give the orderly room, then distract the nurse from Derek with rapid conversation. "We’re here making sure that everyone has gotten a chance to vote. Do you know if everyone on this floor has voted?"

She gives me a strange look. "Most people here are not capable of voting. I’ll check to make sure that anyone who is has gotten a chance."

Behind me, Derek is working his charm on the elderly woman. "Ma’am, I just want to make sure that you got your chance to vote today. Today is election day. Did you vote today?"

Derek, the nurse, and I fall silent at the same time. The elderly woman appears to be thinking it over carefully. Finally, she tilts her head at Derek, opens her mouth, and starts to sing. "It was just… one of those things…"

"I’ll make sure that everyone who wants to vote gets a chance," the nurse says, dryly. "Thank you."

Back in the car. Derek is on the phone with Seth, yelling. "A nursing home. Yeah, we broke into a fucking nursing home. No, it’s not a retirement community, it’s a nursing home." Pause. "No, we didn’t get busted." Pause. "Look, you want these voters, you come get ‘em and their heart monitors, ‘cause I’m not going back in there." Pause. "Hampstead? It’s HAMPSTEAD? We’re at Hampshire. Yeah, I know where that is. Okay." He clicks off. "Turn right out of here."

Fifteen minutes later, we’re walking through a retirement community called Hampstead. Each condo has its own entrance and plenty of parking. Healthy retirees are puttering around in kitchens. I stop to help a woman with three grocery bags and a cane, carrying the bags across the parking lot and placing them gently inside her front hall, all to a litany of how nice it is to meet polite young people these days. I put the last bag down and stand up. "Ma’am? Today is election day and I was wondering if you’d voted yet."

The woman comes back to the door and picks up one of the bags, her expression cool and unfriendly. "You shouldn’t be here, you know. You’re trespassing."