PORTLAND, Maine — As the executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Neil Levesque has met, talked with, and hung out with dozens of presidential candidates, ranging from the successful (George W. Bush, Donald Trump) to the cartoonish (Vermin Supreme).
Sometimes what happens around the people campaigning for the highest office in the land isn’t important – just odd or amusing.
Take the time when candidate Jeb Bush was speaking at an event on the campus of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, where the Institute is located.
In the middle of his speech, Bush leaned across the podium and whispered to Levesque in a concerned tone, "My watch is missing." Trying not to draw attention to himself, Levesque ducked under the table and, crawling around on his hands and knees, searched for the timepiece on the floor.
When he came back up, he reported to the candidate that his mission had been a failure.
An aide was soon dispatched to Bush’s hotel room and reported back with good news. “And it was just this junky watch,” Levesque recalls, laughing. “You’d think a guy like Jeb Bush would have some fancy watch. No.”
In the months leading up to the New Hampshire primary, presidential candidates come streaming through the Institute at a brisk clip. The traffic is especially heavy this year with two dozen Democrats in the race.
“It’s not unusual in this building,” Levesque says, “that we have a candidate here almost every day.”
The Institute plays a key role in the state’s robust political life, which is the direct result of having the first primary in the nation. It conducts polls, provides TV studios, helps stage nationally televised debates and more, all with the aim of teaching students and inspiring civic engagement across the state.
The candidates will spend thousands of hours in New Hampshire between now and the primary, gambling that a win or a strong second-place finish will turbocharge their candidacy and send them to the White House.
Is that strategy built on mere hope or on a hard reality? “I think it’s reality,” Levesque says. “And I think that’s why we have 25 people now doing it.”
For more information visit: www.anselm.edu/new-hampshire-institute-politics