The Trail Less Traveled

Concord N.H. -- Thin, glossy, full-color political advertisements blanket the tables and floors of New Hampshire homes like snow covers the lawns outside.

A batch of one candidate’s ads on a single day can stack at least as high as seven-and-a-half feet at the post office here, with 100 copies jammed into every inch.

The mailers foil automatic processors, forcing postal employees to sort them by hand.

"They’re very thin and shiny, and our machines can’t handle them," said Shawn Patton, the officer in charge of the Concord post office. That leads to a heavier workload and more overtime for handlers and carriers.

For many New Hampshire residents, it means, six, eight, even a dozen pieces of direct mail a day coming to their homes.

And the U.S. mail accounts for just a slice of the barrage of spiels and solicitations Granite State voters are subjected to on a daily, hourly and sometimes minute-by-minute basis as the nation’s first primary, now four days away, approaches.

Television ads -- Republican and Democratic, positive and negative, issue-oriented and character-based -- are lined up one behind the other, with two, three or four runnning consecutively during commercial breaks around the clock.

At times, ads for Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul seem to be the only spots on television. Even Joseph R. Biden Jr., who dropped out of the Democratic contest late Thursday night after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, still had ads running in Concord on Friday.

The hum-drum of the monotonous political advertising beat has given rise to new forms of entertainment here.

"We’re almost playing games. You try to guess the right three people who are going to have their ads" run during a commercial break, said a 29-year-old chiropractor who gave his first name as Paul but declined to give his last name.

The phone calls are incessant. They come from campaign phone-bank callers wanting to know if potential voters are still undecided, from surrogates endorsing candidates and, of course, from outside groups pushing positive or negative messages intended to sway voters. The New Hampshire attorney general is currently probing the particulars of an anti-Mormon "push" poll that has the John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns trading barbs over who is responsible for it.

Many New Hampshire residents say that when the phone rings, they wonder which campaign will be on the other end of the line -- at least those who don’t just hang up immediately.

Charles Elliot, a McCain volunteer from North Alabama, stops dialing numbers at the same time every night. "At about 8:30, people get sick of answering," he said. If not earlier.

Dana Mercier, 36, has avoided the phone-bankers because he is on the other side of campaigning’s digital divide.

"I don’t have a land line," the Laconia resident explained.

But even people who don’t get mailers, don’t use land lines and don’t watch the television ads, can find that the front door remains a point of entry for campaigners.

Katie Vincent, 27, had just moved into her home in Manchester when a campaign volunteer stopped by.

"It was the first knock at our door," Vincent said in an alley outside the Strange Brew Tavern.

Vincent couldn’t even remember the name of the candidate whose surrogate showed up on her doorstep. But her boyfriend, Adam Jackson, said the aide worked for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.

Patton says most New Hampshire residents understand that it is all part of democratic process, and the increased load at the post office is no different: "In the interest of our country, we do it with pleasure."

Nonetheless, he said, "We’re glad when it’s over."

Just four more days.