New Hampshire diary: An election lawyer's dream come true

Editor’s note: David Stonehill is an election attorney from Merrick who is active in Democratic politics.

I went to New Hampshire for the nation’s first primary of 2016 to pursue a political dream of mine. Winning a presidential campaign doesn’t happen because of the Internet. You win when you win over people, one voter at a time. It may be at a house, a diner, on the street, outside a train station or over the telephone. You need to have contact, and that is as true today as it has been in the past.

I have always wanted to take part in an out-of-state presidential primary campaign, so I finally decided to go for it. Who am I supporting in this year’s election? Let’s just say that I strongly believe that Hillary Clinton knows how to get things done.

My destination –– Manchester, N.H. –– was reached by driving six hours (with stops) via New York City, Westchester County, Connecticut and Massachusetts, mostly in moderate rain. I shied away from the coastal route along I-95 to avoid the heavier traffic and because the rainstorm was predicted to be worse along the coast.

In Connecticut, approaching the Massachusetts line, I passed two cars (a Toyota Prius from New York and a Nissan Altima from Connecticut) with Bernie Sanders bumper stickers. Sanders’s campaign, like Clinton’s and the wide field of Republicans’, was sending in reinforcements to the New Hampshire primary.

I reported to one of a number of Clinton campaign offices in New Hampshire, the field headquarters for Manchester on Hanover Street. The third-floor suite of offices, in a renovated, three-story building, next to a theater, was nothing special. The 2016 Clinton campaign, unlike the 2008 campaign, is watching its expenses carefully. The office furniture was used and it showed.