Politics & Government

Gingrich Team Growing In NH

Small group of debate revelers enjoys the show.

A small crowd of supporters of watched the , enjoying hors d'oeuvres and talking public policy.

The debate, which focused on the economy, was also a turning point for Texas whose 53-second answer gaffe caused gasps during the watching party.

“He’s finished,” noted one reveler with another also pointed to the alleged sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain as something that would end his campaign. Others laughed and cheered during the debate, especially after hearing U.S. Rep. Ron Paul say that college students should be paying for college the same way they pay for computers and cellphones.

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Erin Lamontagne, a former Tim Pawlenty supporter who is now with Gingrich, said she thought the debate was a good one.

“I think, overall, it was much better than the last one,” she said. “All the negativity was pretty much a distraction … I don’t like that. I don’t like it when they ask leading questions to get a specific answer.”

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Another Gingrich supporter, Rico McCahon, agreed.

“The negativity was coming from the questioners,” he said, referring to the debate hosts.

Lamontagne said there were four or five different debate parties around the state, noting that the next time they hold one, they may try and have it at one location, so the campaign’s growing network of supporters can all be together.

“He’s the only one who is building up,” she said. “He’s the only one who speaks for himself  … the other ones seem over-coached or they just don’t have the experience or know what they’re talking about. He talks, he knows stuff, he reads stuff, and he knows history, too.”

McCahon said he liked Gingrich’s positivity.

“You notice, in almost any debate, he says that any one of us on the stage can beat Obama,” he said. “In the first debate, when he went after the questioners, when he turned it away from bickering amongst the others … that’s when I thought, well, that’s different.”

Linda Condon, another Gingrich supporter who has spent a lot of time researching the health insurance and medical care issues, said she was originally supporting Rep. Michele Bachmann but changed her mind after seeing her campaign fall apart.

“Michele Bachmann’s campaign is really falling apart here,” she said.

Of the rest of the field, Condon called Perry “evil” and pointed to the inoculation of young girls in Texas as a dangerous decision by him. She said she had been aware of the Gardasil issue since 2007. Condon claimed that there had been 71 deaths of young women due to the vaccine, a statistic backed up by the Center for Disease Control.

“His use of executive power is just like Obama’s,” she said. “He claims it was a mistake but he had been in office for seven years … seven years isn’t a mistake … it was crony capitalism. It absolutely was.”

Condon, while supporting Gingrich, said she also liked former Sen. Rick Santorum, and had been hounding him at public events about the healthcare issues.

Lamontagne said Gingrich was starting to show momentum in the state, with more people coming forward to sign up to help, staff hiring, and an office opening in Manchester this week.

“We’re getting supplies, we’re getting organized,” she said. “I really love the freedom of it. It’s so grassroots.”

Before the debate watching party, a Smart Girl Politics meeting was held, with Lamontagne, Karen Testerman, Kate Baker of Manchester, the national coordinator of the Women for Ron Paul movement, among others, attending. Smart Girl Politics is a group founded in 2008 to “give conservative women a home to express their opinions,” according to a flier.

Editor's Note: The name of one of the attendees to the event was misspelled in an earlier version of this story. It has since been corrected.


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