[M]anchester, New Hampshire — I reached the Radisson Hotel in Manchester on Monday at dawn, hoping to catch some of the presidential candidates on the morning-drive TV and radio shows. Every four years, in the days just prior to the New Hampshire primary, this otherwise unremarkable 12-story hotel and conference center, right downtown, right near the highway, transforms into a bustling major media command post, luring pols and pundits like moths, drawn by the blinding television lights and powerful cameras.
By 7 a.m., the place was hopping. A media mosh pit. A candidate circus.
Outside, satellite dishes had sprouted like mushrooms. Broadcast truck generators whirred. Inside, completely dominating JD’s Tavern, Joe Scarborough and the MSNBC “Morning Joe” gang were on the air, loudly holding court, freely interrupting one another and their guests. In the lobby, WGBH, the Boston PSB affiliate also broadcast live. C-Span too.
One flight up, on the mezzanine, dozens of radio stations, mostly from New Hampshire, set up their microphones on what is called a “radio row.” There, guests are run through back-to-back interviews in a loud, boiler-room setting, shuttled from host to host, plugging themselves or their candidate, frequently asked the same questions, engaged in a political version of speed dating.
I made Radio Row my first stop.
My good luck started early. My friend and White House correspondent Ellen Ratner was guarding the check-in desk and waved me over. She runs Talk Radio News Services, which supplies daily reports to dozens of radio shows nationwide; she also organizes the every four-year event in New Hampshire. A Goddard alum, Ellen and her team provided reports every weekday on my radio program on WDEV in Waterbury for almost 25 years. In 2004, 2008 and 2012, I participated in the radio rows and worked alongside her. She loves Vermont. She loves Bernie. And fortunately, she also likes me.
(In 2004, when Howard Dean ran, one of my first interviews was with the actor Martin Sheen, then playing the president on “The West Wing.” A big Dean supporter. Before I asked my first question, he frowned at me and said: “What’s wrong? You don’t look very happy.”)
After the 2012 primary, Ellen swore she’d never orchestrate another radio row. Too much work. But here she was, back again. After a few brief hellos, she barked: “Carly Fiorina’s in there. Go grab her!”
When I found the former Hewlett-Packard exec in the sea of shows, she was telling a New Hampshire host she was disappointed to be excluded from the Saturday debate, a wild affair. There, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had taken down and embarrassed the rising-poll star in the Republican field, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Fiorina complained the political system was rigged.
A few minutes later, she joined a half a dozen reporters at a small round wooden table. Ellen allowed us each one question (I tried a two-part). As I did throughout most of the day, I asked about the Sanders campaign. Fiorini said forcefully Sanders was lying to the American public. (She also spoke about losing a step-daughter to addiction and that legalizing marijuana was a bad idea.)
A coffee later, at the same round table, I group interviewed Eric Trump, the 32-year-old son of Donald Trump (and Ivana). In manner and hair, he was a less dramatic version of his dad, whom he called his “best friend’’ and a terrific parent he eagerly sought to please.
As for Sanders, the younger Trump, a developer, said Sanders’ democratic socialism would bankrupt the country. His father, “such a great guy,” didn’t need the job but conditions had just gotten “crazy.”
“He takes more incoming fire than anyone in the world,” Eric said, and is a great counterpuncher.
Later in the morning, bankruptcy came up again.
This time, from former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, who didn’t want to talk about Sanders but was happy to talk about Trump’s financial failures.
As we walked down a hallway, Sununu called the front-runner “a loser.”
After the Eric Trump interview on radio row, I went downstairs to squeeze into JD’s Tavern and try and catch a bit of “Morning Joe.” Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and the supporting cast of pundits were peppering Christie with questions. He was lapping it up, firing back one-liners, happy to talk about the Saturday night Rubio smackdown. “In New Jersey, we call that fun.”
After he was done, I stood in the heavyset governor’s one open lane (gave him no E-Z pass) and buttonholed him leaving the set, right before he stopped to do an interview with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. Getting inches from my face, Christie spit out Sanders as unqualified “because he’s a Socialist.”
Mitchell, a veteran who’d been on a conference call all morning, made an honest mistake during the interview that Christie, it seemed, could have let go.
(Just to prove we’re all human, I had a wonderful five-minute interview afterward with Mitchell that I failed to correctly record. She spoke of Sanders’ ability to tap into the anger of the electorate and how much smarter voters are than the pundits. When I asked if her husband, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who Sanders verbally sparred with during a Congressional hearing, ever discussed him, she demurred, said no, turned and walked away.)
After my messed-up Mitchell interview, I snuck off to a quieter back part of the hotel to make some calls when Jeb Bush suddenly emerged from a police cruiser no more than 20 feet away. I hung up, ran outside and joined the only other reporter who had spotted him and was already firing questions. Bush walked inside, helped some fans take a selfie. While he walked about 40 feet to the NBC News Pavilion, he briefly applauded Sanders before a guard stopped me from entering the network facilities with him. Bush said he was “impressed” with Sanders’ campaign.
Soon after, “Morning Joe” wrapped up its broadcast for the day.
Scarborough, a former Florida Republican congressman, chatted with me while he and his young kids waited for a table for breakfast in the lobby restaurant set apart by a plant and flower perimeter.
Frat-boy friendly, approachable, always a fun interview, Scarborough seemed a little stunned by Sanders’ success.
“It’s remarkable. It’s really unlike anything that I’ve seen before,” Scarborough said. He was particularly impressed by the small contributions fueling the campaign.
Mike Barnicle is one of the regular pundits on the “Morning Joe” roundtable. I found him in the lobby, standing around, shooting the breeze, hands in his down jacket pockets, a perpetual smile on his face. In his typical blunt, cut-to-the-chase style, the former Boston Globe columnist said Sanders was succeeding because he had a strong message that was authentic and consistent over 35 years. “He lives it and believes it,” Barnicle said.
When I later caught up with another MSNBC host, Larry O’Donnell, a liberal, he criticized the media, including himself, for underestimating Sanders. He also completely dismissed the idea raised by Sununu and others that Sanders was doing well in New Hampshire only because of his neighborhood status. As though Clinton isn’t well known, O’Donnell said, shaking his head.
The most prominent MSNBC personality is Chris Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” a popular nighttime free-for-all interview show. Four years ago, Matthews appeared live on my radio show. Unscheduled. Totally spontaneous. He walked in to radio row and sat down at my table. We wound up having an on-air argument when I asked about a comment widely attributed to him, that he’d “felt this thrill going up my leg” hearing a speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama. He dared me to prove he’d said it, said I was part of a conservative conspiracy, wanted to bet me $10,000 on the spot. I barely got a word in, didn’t take the bet, but when I rechecked later, wished I had.
This year, when I first spotted Matthews, who also appears on other MSNBC shows as a guest, he was bantering with a group of women near the hotel front door and telling them their analysis of the Saturday debate was “completely, totally and utterly wrong.” They laughed. He asked if any were Irish. When one raised her hand, he said: “I won’t argue with you!”
My first attempt to talk to him did not go well. He clearly didn’t remember me, but he had no interest in talking, and looked a little frightened, like I was a stalker with a sport coat, tie and digital recorder.
A few minutes later, I tried again. He said no, claimed all media inquires had to be pre-approved, that even if I told him my one question ahead of time, I might switch it when the tape recorder went on. Oh, come on, I said, I can’t ask you one question about the primary? Overruling his assistant, he relented. And was brutal on Hillary Clinton.
The big guns — Sanders, Clinton and Trump — were off holding events and were not expected at the hotel. Their surrogates worked the building, including New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a former governor and big supporter of Clinton.
For perspective on Sanders, how about the senator’s chief strategist, senior adviser Tad Devine, whom I bumped into — almost literally — in the lobby. Every time I’d seen him all morning he was on the phone. Makeup pancaked on his face, he spoke about why the campaign had been more successful than he thought it would be and what the strategy was going forward.
Devine is a veteran. He was a senior adviser on the Gore and Kerry campaigns. We talked about his work on Walter Mondale’s campaign in 1984 (landslide loss to Reagan). He said Sanders’ message of income inequality had been his most powerful point. Like Sanders, Devine said he couldn’t believe how much money the campaign had raised in such small amounts.
He explained how the campaign would pick its spots after New Hampshire with so many states holding primaries on Super Tuesday on March 1.
Momentum, Devine said. That’s what the Sanders campaign was looking for out of New Hampshire.
By early afternoon, the lobby was quiet. In a few hours, when the evening drive shows started, the place would start to pulse and buzz again.
As I headed toward the revolving door to leave, a pig on a leash walked in, wearing a Bernie button. I asked her owner if the button meant the pig was a Sanders supporter or if there was some other pork-related message she was trying to send.
Oh no, the owner said, she’s definitely Feeling the Bern.
