Newt’s unconventional NH campaign senses momentum shift
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Until late last week, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s New Hampshire campaign headquarters had no landlines. The toilet seat in the ladies room is the wrong size for the toilet. On Tuesday when a Daily Caller reporter arrived, staffers were just setting up the computer system to run a phone bank.
But with 13 paid staffers, it is decidedly a campaign organization, if a proudly unconventional one.
The organization has improved light years during the past few weeks, said former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith, who has endorsed Gingrich and has been campaigning as a surrogate for the speaker throughout the state.
“They did criticize the organization here early on, maybe with some justification. I mean people quit three, four months ago, so we had to build all that back, but it was really Newt who got the people motivated,” he said.
Indeed, it’s hard to deny the groundswell of support for the former speaker. An event hosted Monday night by the Southern New Hampshire 9/12 Project reportedly drew 1,250 people to Windham High School, though the venue could hold only 600 audience members, making it possibly the largest Granite State campaign event by any candidate yet.
For Gingrich’s New Hampshire staff, this support lends some validation to their unconventional campaign set-up. For instance, Andrew Hemingway, Gingrich’s New Hampshire state director, came to the campaign with little political background. An ardent tea partier, he was introduced to the former speaker by none other than Dave Carney — now Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign manager — who defected from the Gingrich campaign during the summer, along with much of the former House Speaker’s staff.
Hemingway’s first business was Online Sports Coaching, which filmed professional sports coaches and put the videos online to teach parents how to be better coaches. Carney thought he might be able to help Gingrich apply the same technique to train activists in grassroots campaigning.
As something of a political outsider, running a campaign that Smith described as the “outsider” campaign competing against Mitt Romney’s “establishment” candidacy, Hemingway said he came to the campaign with fresh eyes. (RELATED: Full coverage of Newt Gingrich)
“I ask the question ‘why?’ a lot,” he told The Daily Caller. “It seems really simple, but really, it’s like, ‘Why? Why are we doing a direct mail piece? Why are we doing phone banks?’”
“So I’m coming in at it without a political background, so when people say, ‘oh, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that,’ you know: Why? It doesn’t seem like many people really ask why in politics today,” he continued. “It’s just like, ‘this is what you do.’”
Hemingway initially reacted with this type of skepticism to the idea that it was necessary to have a landline phone in the campaign headquarters.
“We’ve been dogged here in the press for not having phones,” Hemingway said, citing Karl Rove and Time’s Mark Halperin as sources of criticism.
“The question is why,” he continued. “We’ve had a phone designated for the office. It’s a cell phone. We just went across the street and bought a phone. To set it up, it’s like 30 dollars, but for some reason we have to have landlines or we’re not a legit organization.”
Ultimately, however, Hemingway came around to the idea of landlines, which were finally installed late last week.
“I bowed to the pressure of the mainstream media. Karl Rove and Mark Halperin are influential people,” he joked. In fact, he said, it was to facilitate the increasing number of media requests and radio interviews they were doing, “something I hadn’t thought about” at first, he said.
“Maybe, at the end of the day, you ask ‘why?’ and you go through this process, and you go fine, ok, you were right,” he said. “But at least we’re asking the question.”
His first call, he said, was to Halperin.
“Oh Mark, by the way, I have a phone now,” he joked. “I didn’t even know who he was at first. I’m like, ‘Are you from Manchester?’ He probably didn’t like that.”
Gingrich’s operation bucks conventional campaign wisdom by having no consultants, and Hemingway vehemently denied that they had any internal polling. He said that there was enough external polling to compensate for it.
“Honestly, you just know,” he said, asked how they gauged Gingrich’s standing in the state without any polling. “I mean, I know we’re ten points behind. ‘Cause you go out and talk to people.”
But the campaign is confident.
“I can feel the momentum,” said Smith. He noted that “right after Cain got out, we had his whole team come in here and joined up.”
“I can’t mention the names, but we’ve had a couple of inquiries from some of the [teams of] other so-called lesser candidates who have expressed interest if things don’t go right for them in Iowa,” he added.
They are also heartened by the motley crew of people making the pilgrimage to New Hampshire because they’re so excited about Newt and they want to help.
For instance, the campaign just hired Carli Demino to be the Director of Hispanic Inclusion for the campaign, after she contacted Hemingway on Twitter and said she’d like to get involved.
“She moved up here from Pennsylvania and started going to work. So, yeah, she’s living in the basement of some place. … It’s crazy. … She’s like, ‘all right, let’s go do it.’ So she just drives up,” Hemingway said.
“That’s what happening. We’ve got a guy back here making phone calls right now who just moved up, I think from New Jersey. … Like, just moved up. We’ve got a lady from Pennsylvania; she’s an attorney from Pennsylvania. She’s renting a hotel room with — she’s got a therapy dog — for five weeks. … We have like 30 people who’ve said they’re coming into state from out of state the week of” the primary to volunteer.
And to top it all off, “we have thirty students coming from the Netherlands on like Wednesday or something,” he said cracking up. “I think they just want to be a part of it.”
“I think one of the reasons why all the so-called hot-shot consultants bailed several months ago was the unorthodox way that Newt is running. And it is unorthodox,” Smith said.
But the result of that, he said, has been positive.
“I think he’s underestimated,” Smith said. “And as President Bush used to say ‘I love to be underestimated.’ When you lose your whole staff — and three or four months ago they walked out the door — of course you would be underestimated.
“But it’s more fun to run that way. Especially when the poll numbers start going up.”
Will Rahn contributed to this article.
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