Cruz In New Hampshire

Hillary has 10 campaign offices in New Hampshire. Jeb has 5. Jet-setting Bernie Sanders has 17! 

Those are the big fish but even Kasich has 5 offices statewide, his headquarters plus four field offices. Chris Christie has two in-state offices, one in Bedford, one in Salem. Rand Paul opened a second office in Littleton on December 5, 2015.


I tried volunteering for the Ted Cruz campaign. The first time I dropped by headquarters was Saturday, January 2. Two things were immediately obvious: One, the location was remotely located, far removed from downtown Manchester. Two, the campaign shared a unit with Armstrong Hearth and Home and had second billing on the marquee.

531 Front St.

I met Ethan Zorfas, the Cruz point man in New Hampshire. He walked around talking on the phone. There was someone else there fiddling with a tablet or laptop. When Mr. Zorfas concluded his call, he was friendly and inviting. I asked if there was a seaside office that would be more convenient for someone like me and he said no. They want to run a lean campaign. They were staying away from downtown Manchester because they wanted more parking spaces.

The pictures above do not capture the ample parking in the rear of the building. Maybe a low rent HQ with lots of parking spaces is the way to go. We know the Cruz campaign is still financially viable but if volunteers have to commute 45 minutes--in my case, much longer for a lot of other would be volunteers--it dampens the enthusiasm.

I made a second visit to HQ, spent some time making phone calls and then received a series of personal calls on my cell that terminated my campaigning.

I have not since returned to Cruz headquarters. Still a political novice, I don't have a lot to compare to this campaign. For an assemblage of interesting people, Ron Paul 2008 might not ever be topped. There was real camaraderie there.

In 2012 I worked for Romney in the general election. We were not united behind a candidate or an ideology. IRS harassment of opposition groups was widely known long before Lois Lerner publicly confessed to a conspiracy and Barack Obama read about it in the newspaper. Between phone calls we would mention the crimes of America's most tyrannical president, all of which were soft-pedaled by the statist media. We were unified by fear and desperation. And of course the field office was a just a couple of miles from my home.

I detected an enthusiasm gap at the Cruz campaign. It seemed that the national campaign was not committed to New Hampshire. So I have not been networking or helping out the senator.

You will hear a lot of pundit silliness comparing and contrasting the Iowa and New Hampshire voter. If Cruz under-performs in New Hampshire, a state where his message could get a lot of traction, it will be due to a lack of effort by his brain trust. That is a shame because New Hampshire was in Cruz's grasp.