Even a cup of
coffee didn't sway one stubborn independent voter -- though
Republican Mike Huckabee gave it his all Tuesday as New
Hampshire residents went to the polls in the state's
presidential primary.
At the Brookside
Congregational Church in Manchester, Huckabee waded into
the crowd to greet voters outside the polling place. He ran
into Joe Legay, 70, and asked him what candidate was
getting his vote.
''I'm
independent,'' Legay said, ducking the question.
''So I have one
more chance -- what can I do? Can I pour you coffee?''
Huckabee asked, then poured him a cup of coffee from a
doughnut shop coffee container. ''Where else than in
New Hampshire does a candidate come out and personally
pour coffee?''
Then he asked
Legay again how he would vote.
''I'm
independent, so I have to be quiet,'' Legay said --
apparently not wanting to hurt Huckabee's feelings,
because as Huckabee moved on, Legay told a reporter he
was voting for Democrat Barack Obama.
''My suggestion
is that if he [Obama] makes it, then [John] Edwards
should be his vice president,'' Legay said.
Huckabee had more
success later outside a church voting precinct in
Dover. For more than eight minutes the candidate engaged an
undecided voter one-on-one on the intricacies of
Medicare reimbursements and health insurance. Wendy
Hay, a nurse, walked away a convert.
''I was
originally a [Fred] Thompson supporter, but I was unhappy
with the amount of time he spent here,'' Hay, 48,
said.
It was mere
coincidence that she chose the noon hour to vote, just as
Huckabee drove up to the St. John's Methodist Church parking
lot to shake voters' hands and distribute granola bars
and bottled water to his volunteers.
Elsewhere, at
Republican Mitt Romney's second stop of the morning -- a
polling location at Bedford High School -- a line of cars
that snaked out of sight was moving too slowly for the
candidate. He and U.S. senator Judd Gregg, a New
Hampshire Republican, got out of their car and trudged
the last third of a mile across packed snow, shaking hands
with voters and posing for pictures along the way.
''I liked his
stance on immigration the most,'' said Mary Doughtie of
Bedford, a Romney supporter. ''And I'm against abortion. And
I'm against gay marriage. So his ideals were the most
like mine.''
At the Beech
Street School in Manchester, city highway department
employee Daniel Lencki, 58, said he had been going back and
forth between Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and
Edwards, but decided after watching Saturday night's
debate to go for Clinton. The deciding factor, he said,
was when Edwards boasted about backing a patient bill of
rights as an accomplishment in the Senate and Clinton
noted that the plan didn't pass. ''I like the other
day the way she fought Edwards,'' he said.
Republican John
McCain was mobbed by supporters after arriving at a
polling place in Nashua, N.H., in his campaign bus.
The crowd of
media and supporters was so big that some voters complained.
Finally, one of the poll workers climbed onto McCain's bus
and pleaded for him to leave. "People are so upset
because they can't get in here to vote," the
worker said. Seconds later the bus pulled away.
(AP)
