Grassroots Adventure
Princeton students spend a week on the road
with Dollar Bill Bradley in New Hampshire.
By Kristin Roper ’03
When the garage band, a collection of scruffy youths attempting alternative music, began its set at 2 a.m., the crowd of Princeton students it entertained was not engaged in a Prospect Avenue bacchanal. The site of this party, rather, was a small hallway in a private airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, and represented a change of pace for all involved: the approximately 35 Princeton students who volunteered for the Bradley campaign during Intersession, and the guest of honor himself, presidential hopeful Bill Bradley ’65, formerly a member of the Cottage Club.
Volunteers unanimously chose the moment when Mr. Bradley entered the airport at 3:30 a.m., having just returned from the Iowa caucus, as the trip highlight. Introduced by Cornell West, currently a professor at Harvard, and Senator Bob Kerry of Nebraska, Mr. Bradley emerged to greet the crowd that had been waiting to see him in the packed hallway for three hours. Jo Sittenfeld ’02, a sophomore volunteer, said “He was excited that all of us were there and meeting him was such a thrill.” The chanting lasted for half an hour, a reflection of the volunteers’ enthusiasm. Another Princeton student on the trip, Daniel Wachtell ’02, said the rally at the airport “gave the group an energy boost that carried us through the week.”
Energy is exactly what the volunteers needed. Organized by the College Democrats, an organization that seeks to advance “all things political and democratic,” the trip dispersed Princeton students throughout various regions of New Hampshire. Typically the volunteers woke up at 7 or 8 a.m. and continued working for 14 hours. In an interview with CBS News’ Dan Rather, Ms. Weiner, who worked for the Gore campaign, explained why college students impact politics: “We don’t have money to donate to campaigns in large amounts. What we have is time — we’re young and willing to freeze our tushes off.”
Some volunteers began their days at Bradley events that the former Princeton student, Rhodes scholar, New York Knicks basketball player and New Jersey Senator was actually attending, while other volunteers spent their mornings waving Bradley signs at oncoming traffic. Throughout the day, all of the Princeton volunteers worked on tasks associated with publicity, such as travelling door-to-door in the most remote corners of New Hampshire and handing out flyers and pamphlets. In the evenings, many volunteers wrote letters of persuasion to undecided local voters and made phone calls to further persuade and attract a crowd for Mr. Bradley’s appearances. Mr. Wachtell said that their goal was to “get Bradley’s name out.”
Tanner Powell, also a Princeton sophomore, worked in Hanover near the Dartmouth campus and found the methods of grassroots politicking, something he perceived as unique to the Bradley campaign, to be extremely rewarding. Mr. Powell said, “Obviously meeting Bradley and hearing him speak was great, but it was also amazing when people were receptive on the phone or happy to see you at their doorstep in Boondocks, New Hampshire.” The majority of the volunteers shared this sentiment — that the atmosphere in the state was unusually open to the ideas of the campaigners. Georgia Garthwaite ’02 made between 450 and 500 phone calls and received only three hang-ups. In addition to the voters whom they contacted, the students observed and harnessed the enthusiasm of their fellow volunteers. Ms. Garthwaite said, “Every person in the headquarter office was completely excited about what they were doing. It was inspiring to see people believing that what they were doing was so right.”
After the Princeton students and hundreds of other volunteers from other colleges and age groups contributed to the campaign efforts, the day of reckoning arrived just after midnight on Monday, January 31. The New Hampshire primary was an opportunity for Mr. Bradley to rebound from his serious defeat in Iowa where Mr. Gore captured 63 percent of the vote to Mr. Bradley’s 35 percent. According to polls, Mr. Bradley maintained the lead in New Hampshire for 14 weeks; with the loss in Iowa, the stability of those polls faltered.
The final results place Mr. Gore with 52 percent of the vote and Mr. Bradley with 47 percent and have been variously interpreted. Mr. Bradley’s supporters are quick to note that the Vice President only received 6,000 more votes, making this the narrowest margin of victory in the history of the New Hampshire primary. “As a barometer for the whole nation, 6,000 votes is pretty ridiculous,” said Mr. Wachtell. Additionally, President Clinton lost both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in 1992, proving that it is possible to stumble early and still win the White House.
The glimmer of optimism must be tempered by at least small doses of realism. Assuming that Mr. Bradley succeeds in the upcoming primaries, and that is a weighty assumption, the campaign will only get tougher in the West and the South.
Regardless of Mr. Bradley’s performance in New Hampshire, the volunteers from Princeton do not waver in their support of their candidate. His stressed issues include universal health care, campaign finance reform, race relations, abortion, and the environment and are extremely important to the students. Even those Bradley volunteers who find their candidate’s leanings to be overly liberal respect his willingness to assert his opinions rather than providing politically packaged sound-bytes. The allure of Mr. Bradley to his volunteers is founded on his integrity and intellect. For Mr. Powell, the spirit of the Bradley campaign was captured in something the candidate said in one of his many speeches in New Hampshire: “Let the rich people in this country buy all the cars they want, take all the vacations they want. They are not going to buy democracy.”
Although none of the volunteers interviewed would venture to describe Mr. Gore as unintelligent, they agreed that he does not seem as sincere or honest, largely because of his association with the Clinton administration. Mr. Bradley recently capitalized on this conception of “tricky” Mr. Gore by comparing him to Richard Nixon in a debate between candidates. But it is precisely the fact that Mr. Gore serves as Vice President that provides him with the support of a majority of the Democratic network in the United States, something that has already proved a handicap to the Mr. Bradley campaign.
Most participants in the Intersession adventure agreed that Mr. Bradley’s association with Princeton was a non-issue in their support of him. When a group of students had an opportunity to speak with Mr. Bradley it did not occur to any of them to tell the class of ’65 graduate that they were fellow Tigers. Mr. Powell said, “That’s what connected me in the beginning, but by the end I supported Mr. Bradley because he is my candidate.” Rather than choosing Mr. Bradley as a presidential candidate to endorse because of his ties to the University, Mr. Wachtell, who met Bradley as an eight-year-old and followed his career closely, chose Princeton partly because it is where Mr. Bradley attended.
Instead of appealing particularly to Princeton students, the Intersession volunteers agree that Mr. Bradley appeals to many young adults. According to pollsters, he captures the segment of voters between the ages of 18 and 25.
What else must Mr. Bradley capture in order to remain in this race? Fortunately for the candidate, money is not a serious concern. Even without the support of a large segment of the Democratic network, Mr. Bradley has still generated enough funds to continue his pursuit of the presidency. The central focus of the campaign will be the upcoming primaries: New York, California, Massachusetts, and Ohio in March. As Mr. Bradley said, “The warm-ups are over. The national campaign has begun. We have five weeks to take our message to the country.”
A small army of inspired Princeton democrats decided this Intercession who would make the cooler President.
