Clark’s Heavy Campaigning in N.H. Is Good for Third

After a month spent campaigning in a state he had nearly to himself, Wesley K. Clark battled Sen. John Edwards for a third-place finish Tuesday night and looked toward the seven states that will test candidates next Tuesday.

“We’re heading South, we’re heading West, and we ain’t slowing down until the final buzzer sounds,” Clark told supporters at a late-night rally at C.R. Spark’s, a Bedford restaurant.

Clark’s campaign is hoping its money, heavy advertising and the candidate’s Southern roots will carry him to improved showings in Tuesday’s contests, mostly in the South and Southwest.

“Today was just the first battle in our campaign to take America back,” said Clark, who did not participate in last week’s Iowa caucuses but invested his time courting voters in New Hampshire.

“Four months ago, we weren’t even in this race.... All we had was hope and a vision for a better America,” Clark said. “Four months later, we came into New Hampshire as one of the elite eight; tonight we leave New Hampshire as one of the final four.”

He then told the cheering crowd, “There’s still a couple more rounds to go.”

The end of the day, however, was less encouraging for Clark than its beginning.

Clark awoke Tuesday to find himself the lead story in New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, the Union Leader. “Clark ‘Carries’ Dixville Notch,” the headline read. It was a welcome -- albeit mostly symbolic -- boost for Clark, who had found his campaign lagging in recent polls.

He took eight of the 15 votes -- according to tradition, cast as the clock struck 12 on the morning of the primary -- in the hamlet in the northern part of the state. He also won in the similarly small community of Hart’s Location, where residents also vote at midnight, with six of the 16 ballots cast.

Clark was the only candidate this season to visit Dixville Notch, going there twice.

“This is a great way to begin the next day,” a smiling Clark told Dixville-area residents when the votes were tallied about 12:15 a.m. “This is the first election I’ve had since homeroom student council representative. This is a big step for me.”

“Make room for the next president of the United States,” spokesman Mo Elleithee crowed to supporters.

If Clark was riding high in Dixville Notch, he was back to being a candidate a few hours later -- one with plenty of work ahead, it was clear by early evening.

After returning to Manchester about 4 a.m., Clark took his morning swim -- although he spent more time in the hot tub, he said -- then took to the streets before 7 a.m. to greet voters and ask one last time for their help.

“Hi, I’m Wes Clark. I’d sure like to have your support,” he said throughout the day.

Twelve hours later, he was still at it, greeting voters at Parker-Varney School, one of the city’s largest polling stations.

His request for votes served as an anecdotal entrance poll of sorts, and early on things did not look great for the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

His request for a vote was greeted by one woman with a stammering, “Uh, well, nice to meet you,” and by a man who said, “Well, um, sorry.”

Peter Thierrien, although thrilled to shake Clark’s hand, just couldn’t help out the retired general.

“I’m voting for Bush,” he said. “But I really wanted to meet the general. It was an honor.”

Throughout the day, Clark stood in the single-digit temperatures with no hat and no gloves, only hand-warmers hidden in his pockets.

After a half-hour of apparently fruitless pleas at Parker-Varney, Andre Sevigny came through on Clark’s request for a vote.

“You got it,” Sevigny said. “You have the vision and are leading in a way that is actually going to be good.”

“You’re gonna win,” another man said, then added: “Beat Bush. Beat Bush.”

As his poll numbers stagnated here, Clark turned his attention to next Tuesday’s voting. And he has retooled his message to focus less on his national security experience and more on his humble beginnings and the fact that he was reared in the relatively more conservative South.

He reminded many of those on their way to the polls that his father died when he was 3 and that he was reared by his mother, a secretary. He made relatively little money in the military, he said, less than $50,000 for most of his career. (Clark earned $84,000 as a four-star general in 1999.)

Once, he said, he didn’t have the money for proper repairs when the car muffler wore out.

The car “was going prup, prup, prup,” Clark told a voter outside one polling station. “I looked for a place to buy muffler tape because I knew they were going to charge me 250 bucks if I took it into the shop.”

Clark was out in the cold, shaking hands in the town of Derry almost until the moment the polls closed.

“He’s a trooper,” said campaign manager Eli Segal. “He wants to win.”

Clark headed to South Carolina a few hours after the polls closed, but a planned campaign stop had to be postponed. After refueling, he flew on to Oklahoma for an appearance today in Tulsa, and was scheduled to fly later in the day to New Mexico and Arizona, all states with upcoming primaries.