Free Republic

• Field organization. Vice-President Al Gore may have won the 2000 New Hampshire primary — and subsequent primaries, which fed on the New Hampshire–generated momentum — thanks to a traffic jam. At least that’s what many Democratic operatives with experience in New Hampshire seem to think. Today, when people look back at the 2000 Democratic-primary season, the prevailing memory is of Gore trouncing former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley. But he beat Bradley in New Hampshire by just four points, a relatively narrow margin of 6395 votes. The bulk of these votes — more than 3000 — came from Hillsborough...

The Boston Phoenix out yesterday carries a dispatch by Seth Gitell that includes the following anecdote about the 2000 Democratic primary in New Hampshire. “Gore operatives had access to exit polls showing the vice president being defeated by Bradley. They also learned that while Democratic voters were voting in large numbers for Gore, independents, many of them upscale suburban voters, were voting for Bradley’s sophisticated brand of liberalism.” This they knew by early afternoon. Their solution? “The Gore team organized a caravan to clog highway I-93 with traffic so as to discourage potential Bradley voters from getting to the polls.”...