Santorum’s meet & greet in Hollis, NH

Earlier today, Rick Santorum held a town hall in Hollis, NH, and followed that with a personal appearance at Hollis Pharmacy and General Store.  I missed the first event because of my appearance on the NARN show this afternoon with Mitch Berg, but I drove to Hollis from Manchester to make the second.  I got there well ahead of the candidate, but the store was completely packed when I arrived, with another 100+ people standing outside.  I wiggled my way into the pharmacy anyway; I needed to buy some cold medicine, and I didn’t want to make another stop.  I asked the young woman at the register if people had been buying or whether they were just squatting, and she assured me the store was doing good business in the period before Santorum’s arrival.  If I had to guess, I’d say there were around 300 people waiting for Santorum, and quite possibly more.

When he did arrive, Santorum didn’t show any hesitation at pressing the flesh.  He tried to say hello to everyone in the store (including me, as you’ll see in the video below), stopping momentarily for a prayer led by the store’s owner.  I overheard the owner tell another reporter that he’s active in the state Republican party and that he hasn’t chosen a candidate to support yet.  The wall of the store near where I stood had three pictures of the owner with Newt Gingrich on a recent campaign appearance.  He insisted that if anyone wanted to know how he’d vote that “I will vote for the Republican.”

After his tour through the store, Santorum went outside, but didn’t deliver any prepared remarks.  He briefly thanked everyone for coming to see him, but said that his voice was tired out from the town hall and that he wanted to rest it for the debate.  Peter Ingemi told me that Santorum also said he would go to Mass next before going to St. Anselm’s for the debate, but I wasn’t close enough to hear it.

Even though Santorum didn’t give a speech, it didn’t appear that anyone left disappointed.  I spoke with a young couple at the event who have not yet made up their minds on which candidate to support, but that it was between Santorum and Newt Gingrich.  The man’s biggest issue was foreign policy, while the young woman said that her biggest issues were paychecks vs food stamps and the “culture of dependency” in the country.  Both said that the debates tonight and tomorrow would make the most difference in their decision.  The young man wanted to see how well each of the two defended their positions against the field.

I met quite a few of my colleagues at this event — Peter, of course, but also Stacy McCain, Rich Lowry, Politico’s national politics editor Charlie Mahtesian, and Ben Smith, who just moved from Politico to BuzzFeed.  Ben was very excited about the new story that went up this afternoon, in which one of his reporters attended a RuPaul publicity event in New Hampshire — very obviously trying to exploit Ron Paul’s popularity and the primary.  The reporter, Rosie Gray, asked RuPaul nothing but Ron Paul-type policy questions, and … hilarity ensues.

Here’s the video I took from the event, which mostly serves to give a sense of the flavor of these events. Tomorrow, assuming I recover from today, I plan to attend a Hispanic town-hall meeting that Newt Gingrich will hold, and perhaps look for a Ron Paul event as well.

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