Jim Wilson/The New York TimesReporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
Jim Estrin asks Jim Wilson about his experience so far in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he has spent much of his time covering Romney.
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MANCHESTER, N.H. — Rod Olsen, a stay-at-home father who lives in California, always wanted to work on a political campaign in New Hampshire. For him, the state was the Wrigley Field of politics, the iconic place where political junkies have to go at least once in their lives.
Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
He initially supported Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, but Mr. Pawlenty dropped out. He was still searching for another candidate as recently as late November when he bumped into someone who worked for Mitt Romney.
Mr. Olsen, 42, who considers himself a Christian conservative, decided to back Mr. Romney even though he doubted the candidate’s commitment to conservatism. He wanted to get to New Hampshire so badly, he said, that he overlooked those doubts and signed up.
On the night of the Iowa caucuses last week, Mr. Olsen and his wife, Kristin, who is a state assemblywoman in California, and their three children were glued to the television at their home in Modesto. Mr. Olsen was excited because he was flying to New Hampshire the next day to work for Mr. Romney. Read more…
MANCHESTER, N.H. — With a loud crowd of protesters amassed on the sidewalk, Newt Gingrich skipped an appearance at his campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, where about 100 volunteers and supporters waited for him on the eve of primary day.
Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
His campaign’s security team pulled the plug on the event after determining that the front and back entrances to the office were unsafe for Mr. Gingrich and his wife to enter, said R.C. Hammond, the campaign spokesman. The disappointed volunteers were scheduled to join Mr. Gingrich later in the evening at The Draft sports bar in Concord, where he planned to watch the college football championship game.
Mr. Hammond, who piped in by speakerphone to a press bus, declined to say why the security team made the decision. The protesters waved signs and chanted, supporting two competing candidates in the Republican primary: Ron Paul and an individual named Vermin Supreme, who wore a rubber boot on his head and danced while speaking through a megaphone. Read more…
SOMERSWORTH, N.H. — Rick Santorum spent his final full day of campaigning in New Hampshire by soft-pedaling his criticism of Mitt Romney, who is ahead in the polls.
Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
While much of the Republican pack was blasting Mr. Romney as a heartless, leveraged buyout executive during his years at Bain Capital, Mr. Santorum declined to do so.
Rather, Mr. Santorum repeated his milder criticism that Mr. Romney was not a true conservative. But Mr. Santorum did not mention his rival by name, giving rise to speculation that Mr. Santorum might be angling for the vice-presidential spot on a Romney ticket.
At Mary Ann’s Diner in Derry, N.H., Mr. Santorum was asked if he thought Mr. Romney was a conservative. “I think he is on some issues, but we are looking for someone who can make a strong contrast, not someone who is maybe good on one or two issues.” He said the party needed someone who could “energize the conservative base.”
Mr. Santorum appears to be running in the bottom half of the six-man field here, and his crowds are somewhat smaller than when he arrived in New Hampshire on Wednesday after losing in the Iowa caucuses to Mr. Romney by just eight votes. He spent much of the day lowering expectations for a strong finish in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
“I would be ecstatic with second place,” he told reporters outside the diner. “Are you kidding me? Oh my goodness. Look, Ron Paul has run here about 17 times. To do as well as him, I’m not sure that’s possible, but if we do, it would be a huge win for us.” Read more…
HENNIKER, N.H. – Untold numbers of New Hampshire voters have tried to get a few words with the Republican presidential candidates barnstorming their state. But it’s likely that Jon M. Huntsman Jr. is the only one with whom some have conversed in Chinese.
Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
At his campaign stops, people young and old have approached Mr. Huntsman with a chipper “Ni hao” (hello) or “Ni hao ma” (how are you). Some have waded through the gauntlet of television cameras to tell Mr. Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, about their trip to Beijing, their dining experiences in Hong Kong or their son’s college semester in Shanghai.
After a town hall event in Keene on Sunday night, Cindi Croft of Newport waited patiently in a long line to introduce her daughter Katelyn, 16, to Mr. Huntsman. Katelyn studied Mandarin in Beijing last year, Mrs. Croft said, and had hoped to meet the Huntsmans – and perhaps even play the harp for them – while she was there. But Mr. Huntsman left China before she had a chance. Read more…
DERRY, N.H. — Rick Santorum said Monday that comments he made last week in Iowa about food stamps that some construed as racially charged were the result of his having been tongue-tied and were not a reference to black people.
Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
Moreover, he said he has done more in black communities “than any Republican in recent memory.”
Mr. Santorum, who had worked on overhauling the welfare system when he was in Congress, was discussing food stamps in Sioux City, Iowa, on Jan. 1 when he was reported to have said: “I do not want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”
He maintains that he did not say “black” people’s lives but rather stumbled verbally when he was trying to say “people’s lives” and uttered a short syllable that came out as “plives.”
Nonetheless, he faced criticism afterward for apparently linking food stamps with black people, although there are more whites (49 percent of recipients) on food stamps than blacks (26 percent). The rest (20 percent) are Hispanic.
On Monday, at a stop at Mary Ann’s Diner here, he was asked by a reporter if he had been unfair to black people.
“Oh that’s just absurd,” he said testily, as a mob of reporters surrounded him.
“First off, I didn’t say the word black. I got my tongue tied. You guys are making _ look at my track record, look at what I’ve done for opportunity and helping people. Look at my record of employment, look at my record of working in the community. You guys, you guys _ it’s really sad that you are bringing this up. It’s just sad news. I’ve done more in the African-American communities as a Republican than any Republican in recent memory.”
With that, he hopped in his campaign van and headed off to his next event.
In a terse four words, the Supreme Court on Monday issued an order upholding prohibitions against foreigners making contributions to influence American elections.
The decision clamped shut an opening that some thought the court had created two years ago in its Citizens United decision, when it relaxed campaign-finance limits on corporations and labor unions. On Monday the Supreme Court, upholding a lower court’s decision in Bluman, et al., v. Federal Election Commission, refused to extend its reasoning in Citizens United to cover foreigners living temporarily here.
Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections.
You’ve tried shredding his record, mocking his ideology, assailing his truthfulness. It’s come to not very much. So if you’re Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul, how, exactly, do you stop Mitt Romney?
The answer is: You probably don’t, or at least not in any mortal way. But in this thing about Bain Capital and the factories it closed, Mr. Romney’s rivals might just have found something he needs to worry about, now and in November.
Like it or not, and most of us don’t, there is a real craft to negative campaigning. For an allegation to do real damage, it has to confirm some narrative about a candidate that voters already fear. And it’s always more effective to undermine the strength of a candidate than it is to underscore a known weakness.
Liberals trying to un-elect George W. Bush in 2004 published entire indictments enumerating his crimes against the English language. None of it amounted to much, because most voters had long since decided that Mr. Bush wasn’t fit for Mensa, and they didn’t especially care.
But conservative attacks on John Kerry’s war record were devastating, precisely because they went directly to the core of his argument. Not only did the “swift-boating” of Mr. Kerry cast doubt on his heroism in Vietnam, but it also added to lingering doubts about his constancy, suggesting that he would change his story when the circumstances demanded it. Read more…
Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Obama named William M. Daley his chief of staff at the White House last January.10:14 p.m. | Updated The full report of this article is available here.
President Obama announced on Monday that William M. Daley, the White House chief of staff, was stepping down, after a frustrating year in which Mr. Daley struggled to find his footing in a ferociously partisan Washington. He will be replaced by Jacob J. Lew, the budget director.
Mr. Obama, who recruited Mr. Daley a year ago, announced the departure at 3 p.m. in the State Dining Room. It is the most significant shakeup yet in the Obama White House, which has prided itself on a lack of internal drama, with a tightly knit circle of senior advisers playing a dominant role.
“Obviously this was not easy news to hear,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he had asked Mr. Daley to reconsider his decision to go home to Chicago, but that “the pull of the hometown we both love, a city that’s been synonymous with the Daley family for generations, was too great.”
Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesJacob J. Lew, known as Jack, has extensive experience in the White House and on Capitol Hill, having served in two administrations and for a speaker of the House.Mr. Daley submitted his resignation to Mr. Obama last week, a senior administration official said, having discussed his future with his wife over the Christmas holiday and concluding that this was the right time to leave. “It’s been a pretty frenetic year,” the official said. “He felt like it was a propitious time.”
His successor, Mr. Lew, known as Jack, is a well-regarded veteran of the White House budget office, State Department and Wall Street. With his long experience on Capitol Hill, officials said he would be able to forge better ties to Congress.
“Jack has had one of the other most difficult jobs in Washington,” Mr. Obama said. “Jack’s economic advice has been invaluable and he has my complete trust, both because of his mastery of the numbers, but because of the values behind those numbers.”
Mr. Daley, an affable former banker who is the son and brother of legendary Chicago mayors, proved to be an awkward fit on the Obama team. Recruited largely for his deal-making skills and ties to the business world, he failed to help his boss strike a huge budget deal with Republicans in the House.
After that failed negotiation, which led to months of acrimony between the White House and Congress, some of Mr. Daley’s duties were transferred to Pete Rouse, a low-profile former Congressional aide with closer ties to the president.
The news of Mr. Daley’s departure was first reported by the Tribune Company newspaper chain.
That Mr. Daley was frustrated by Washington was no secret. In October, he told a Chicago TV station that he planned to leave the White House in January 2013, at the end of Mr. Obama’s first term. It was not clear what precipitated his decision to leave now.
During his tenure, Mr. Daley had come under criticism for not adequately cultivating leaders in Congress. Some Democrats bridled when he publicly criticized Democrats, as well as Republicans, for being responsible for the gridlock in Washington.
HUDSON, N.H. — After more than a week of not taking questions from his press corps, and after two days of back-to-back comments that his campaign has scrambled to explain, Mitt Romney stepped to the microphone after an event at metal fabricating plant here Monday afternoon, and sought to clarify remarks he has made about fearing the “pink slip” in his private sector career, as well as his statement earlier in the day that he likes “being able to fire” people or businesses that provide poor service.
Offering more context to his assertion at a morning Chamber of Commerce event Monday that he enjoys firing people — “I like to be able to fire people who provide services to me,” Mr. Romney said then, in Nashua, N.H. — Mr. Romney further clarified that he was referring to his belief that individuals should have the choice to get rid of insurance companies that are not providing adequate care and coverage.
“I don’t want to live in a world where we have Obamacare telling us which insurance we have to have, which doctor we can have, which hospital we go to,” he said. “I believe in the setting as I described this morning where people are able to choose their own doctor, choose their own insurance company. If they don’t like their insurance company or their provider, they can get rid of it.”
Asked for specific examples of when, in his career, Mr. Romney feared the pink slip, as he claimed on Sunday, Mr. Romney talked in general terms about the uncertainty of life in the private sector.
8:56 p.m. | Updated
Newt Gingrich has ramped up his attacks on Mitt Romney as a heartless leveraged buyout executive for his years at Bain Capital, asking reporters in Manchester on Monday, “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that, somehow, a little bit of a flawed system?”
But Mr. Gingrich was himself on an advisory board for a major investment firm that had a similar business model, Forstmann Little, a pioneering private equity firm co-founded in 1978 by Theodore J. Forstmann that was, along with Mr. Romney’s Bain Capital and Henry R. Kravis’s Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, among the leading private equity firms during the 1980s and 1990s.
Forstmann Little earned billions of dollars in profits from its investments in companies including General Instrument and Gulfstream Aerospace. But the firm shut down most of its operations a decade ago after suffering losses from ill-timed bets on high-flying telecommunications companies at the height of that industry’s bubble.
Mr. Gingrich’s involvement with the firm could complicate his attacks on Mr. Romney.
Still, to be fair, Mr. Forstman bristled at some of the more aggressive tactics of his rivals, and once described them as “barbarians at the gate.” That phrase was used as the title of a bestselling book that detailed Mr. Forstmann’s buyout Read more…
Mitt Romney’s Republican rivals are attacking his wealth and his role at his private equity firm Bain Capital. Jeff Zeleny reports.
Cheryl Senter for The New York TimesRick Santorum speaking at a town hall forum at the Derry-Salem Elks Lodge in Salem, N.H.Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
“Oh, gosh, in my dreams second place!” he said to a reporter who asked if coming in second would count as win.
“Given the fact that we’re not running any media up here,” he said, “and we’ve only really spent five days here campaigning, second place would be a dream come true.”
Mr. Santorum likes to lower expectations. That helped him in Iowa, where he had been running at the back of the pack until finishing just eight votes behind Mitt Romney, who came in first.
Mr. Romney is way out in front in the polls in New Hampshire, his adopted home state — he used to be governor of Massachusetts — and so second place, whoever snares it, could be seen as a win.
In these final hours before the polls open Tuesday, Mr. Santorum has a packed schedule. It started with a 6:45 a.m. radio interview and ends with a rally in Manchester beginning at 7 p.m. before he concludes with a television interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
As he stood out on a playing field this frosty morning at a local college in Nashua, where about 100 people gathered to listen, Mr. Santorum focused on economic issues.
As he walked off the field, he was surrounded by a large knot of reporters and cameramen. He said in response to a question about Social Security that he would keep it solvent by means-testing to exclude wealthier citizens who could afford to pay their own way.
He also said he liked the idea of raising the age at which people would be eligible for Social Security, noting that 70 percent of people start receiving benefits at age 62 — and they will live, on average, an additional 23 years.
“People will live and work and collect Social Security while you have people barely able to make ends meet,” he said. “A better alternative is to focus Social Security benefits on those who need it.”
He also told reporters in response to a question that he did not intend to attack Mr. Romney for investments he made that ended in job losses.
“I’m not making it a liability,” Mr. Santorum said. “I believe in the private sector,” he added, saying that he did not believe Mr. Romney invested in companies in order to put people out of business.
Later, at a town-hall-style meeting with about 100 people at an Elks Lodge here in Salem, Mr. Santorum again stuck to economics, but he was asked a number of questions on social issues.
One question was what he would do if one of his children were gay; Mr. Santorum has drawn fire in New Hampshire, especially from young people, for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“My job is to love my child unconditionally,” Mr. Santorum replied, “and I would love my child unconditionally.”
Richard Perry/The New York TimesJon Huntsman making a breakfast stop at Daddy Pop’s Tumble Inn Diner in Claremont, N.H.CONCORD, N.H. – Fueled by momentum from his weekend debate performances and rising standing in the polls, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. hustled to independent voter strongholds around New Hampshire on Monday to make the case that he, not Mitt Romney, would be the most formidable Republican challenger to President Obama in November. Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.From New Hampshire
Mr. Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, is taking increasingly strong swipes at Mr. Romney, from whom he hopes to siphon the votes of independents and moderate Republicans. At a stop in Concord, he appeared to relish referencing Mr. Romney’s statement at a Nashua Chamber of Commerce breakfast earlier in the day that he liked “being able to fire people” whose performance disappointed him, although Mr. Romney was speaking more generally about businesses that provide bad service.
Before addressing supporters in downtown Concord in the late morning, Mr. Huntsman stopped and proclaimed to reporters: “Governor Romney enjoys firing people; I enjoy creating jobs.”
He later added, “It may be that he’s slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America right now, and that’s a dangerous place to be.”
In the latest release of the 7 News/Suffolk University tracking poll of likely voters in the state’s Republican primary, 13 percent said they planned to vote for or leaned toward Mr. Huntsman, compared Read more…
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An assault on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital takes his central rationale as a candidate and turns it into a bludgeoning tool.
Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital “looted” a company in Gaffney, S.C., and got “rich off failures and sticking it to someone else,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas charged this morning as he began a swing through South Carolina.
Jack Lew, currently the director of the Office of Management and Budget, will replace William M. Daley as President Obama’s chief of staff.
Will John McCain’s baggage as a Washington insider and someone long distrusted by conservatives be more harmful than helpful to Mitt Romney?
House Speaker John A. Boehner is leading a delegation to Brazil, Colombia and Mexico as the House prepares to take up energy and infrastructure legislation that is part of the Republican jobs agenda.
During an interview with “60 Minutes,” Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, strongly defended his party’s dug-in opposition to tax increases last year.
On Wednesday, the administration agreed to seek a swift review of President Obama’s health care law by the Supreme Court.
House Democrats, seeking to capitalize on recent questions about the political leanings of several justices, say guidelines about when to withdraw from a case should be binding.
On Wednesday, the administration agreed to seek a swift review of President Obama’s health care law by the Supreme Court.
House Democrats, seeking to capitalize on recent questions about the political leanings of several justices, say guidelines about when to withdraw from a case should be binding.
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