NJTV News Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron traveled to New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary and spoke about what was happening there with NJTV News Correspondent Michael Hill.
Hill: Let’s bring in, David, our Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron. He’s getting the pulse of New Hampshire right now on the eve of the first in the nation primary. Michael, thank you for joining us. Tell us, what’s Gov. Christie doing today? What’s he doing now?
Aron: Well, Michael, we are at a Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester, about 150, maybe 200 people now are waiting for a 6 p.m. town hall, the governor’s fourth town hall today. I spoke to the spokesperson for the Christie campaign on the ride up here, Samantha Smith. She said they’re riding a wave from that Marco Rubio episode on Saturday night. The governor really kind of demolished Rubio. And to speak to David’s point a second ago, I spoke to people outside in line to get in here. There was a whole family from Rhode Island who have come up here eight times to see the candidates. Now, at Christie’s first town hall this morning, he sounded very optimistic. He’s on a roll, he’s making his closing argument. Let’s hear a little of him at 9 a.m. in Hudson:
“Thirty-four hours. Not that I’m counting. Thirty-four hours until the polls close here, and what we know is that no one knows what’s going to happen in this race. Nobody. It is completely up in the air, and all of you — the voters in New Hampshire — are going to decide it. And there’s lots of history here in New Hampshire about all of you fooling everybody in terms of who you ultimately decided to pick. I think you guys are the greatest shoppers in America. Right? I mean, there are still people shopping. It’s 34 hours to go. If you do this at every other part of your life, I can only imagine what the stores look like on Christmas Eve in New Hampshire. People jammed in the stores on Christmas Eve, saying, ‘OK, it’s finally time to decide what to buy our loved ones for Christmas because I have to think about it a long time.’ But I admire that. And I’m glad, by the way, you waited until after Saturday night to decide, so many of you, because here’s why the debate was so important. You got to be ready to be president of the United States. The president of the United States is not about having on a nice suit and a good smile and reading the teleprompter well. Being president of the United States is not about that. We’ve had that for the last seven years. Barack Obama wears a nice suit, he’s got a big smile and he reads the teleprompter well. But he never managed a thing in his life. Jack Gilchrist wouldn’t hire him here to manage a shift, let alone to be president of the United States. Fact is that you need to have some experience in doing this.” –Christie
Aron: So the governor is saying, what his campaign is saying — that this race is wide open, that 40 percent are still undecided. And many of the people here tonight said they’re either for Cruz or Rubio, ironic as that may seem tonight. Michael?
Hill: Michael, as you mentioned a big pool of undecided voters. Who does that benefit in a race like this?
Aron: It’s very hard to say, but it’s apparently typical of New Hampshire. I’m told that in 2012, 50 percent were undecided a month away from the election and a full third of the electorate was undecided in the last week, so this is true to form. I think it’s also worth pointing out that there are really two contests up here tomorrow — the regular primary in which Donald Trump holds the substantial lead in the polls and the governor primary — the Kasich, Bush, Christie primary. The national dialogue seems to put Christie in third in that one. Kasich is said to have a great ground game, etc., etc. But Gov. Christie plans to campaign in South Carolina, he announced today. So he’s preempting the doubters. He’s going to South Carolina on Wednesday. Michael, David?
Hill: Michael Aron live for us there in New Hampshire on the eve of the first in the nation primary. Thank you Michael.
Aron: Thank you.