Edwards Is Pleased With Third-Place Tie in Granite State

Deborah Nelson stood amid more than a dozen Sen. John Edwards supporters Tuesday night, her eyes glued to an oversized television set on a tall cart in a hotel ballroom. As the candidates’ vote totals cropped up on the screen, she began cheering as though she was watching a horse race.

“Keep going, keep going,” Nelson shouted, and then, as Edwards’ name temporarily came up a point ahead of retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark’s, “Yes!”

The big story out of New Hampshire was Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry’s continuing political resurrection. But Edwards supporters said Tuesday night that their candidate’s finish here, a virtual tie for third place with Clark, was just as significant.

It meant that, in their eyes, Edwards was about to head home to the South as a credible contender.

Last week, his supporters credited Edwards’ surprise second-place finish in Iowa with helping usher Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri from the race. Looking ahead, they hope he will be able to muscle Clark aside.

“The other two guys [Kerry and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean] had favorite-son advantage, coming from either side of New Hampshire,” said Sue Chadwick, 50, of Nashua, as she waited for Edwards to speak to about 300 supporters in a Radisson Hotel ballroom here. “He’s very strong now going into South Carolina. I think he’s going to surge.”

Edwards said he was “absolutely” pleased by his finish, particularly since Clark, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, had skipped the Iowa caucuses and focused their time and money on New Hampshire.

Clark “had a 20-point lead on me 10 days ago,” Edwards told reporters in his hotel suite as the polls closed. “Gen. Clark ... spent a ton of money here in New Hampshire, spent all of his time here in New Hampshire, and I’ve been here for the last week.”

Because of his surprise finish in Iowa, Edwards’ campaign here had a different feel. Instead of encountering voters in living rooms and small gatherings, he was surrounded by cameras and large crowds.

And the Edwards celebrations were different too. In Des Moines last week, Edwards supporters greeted his second-place finish as though he had won a sports championship.

Here, the celebration was more like an ebullient cocktail party.

“I expected it,” said Richard Norton, 64, a retired heating-systems mechanic.

Norton said he decided Edwards was his man about three weeks ago, and stuck one of the senator’s blue lawn signs in front of his house.

“When I put that sign on my lawn, he was in the single digits [in New Hampshire polls],” Norton said. “The last numbers I saw, he was in the teens [in the primary results] ....I think Iowa was real, and it told a story.”

Edwards began the day with a brief appearance at a polling place, moving quickly and shaking hands with supporters lined up in 17-degree weather outside Parker-Varney Elementary School in Manchester’s 10th Ward.

Later, at the Radisson, he vowed to “take this energy and momentum that we saw in Iowa, this extraordinary energy and momentum that we have seen in New Hampshire, and we’re gonna see great victories. Yes, we are!”