Clark makes inroads on N.H. trail
By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 1/10/2004
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. -- This was once Howard Dean turf, the southwestern New Hampshire landscape of maple trees and pacifists. But here at a midday meet-the-candidate event, some 600 people overstuffed Town Hall and cheered retired Army General Wesley K. Clark. And outside, a Dean operative was passing out anti-Clark fliers -- which the Clark camp took, in a way, as a compliment.
It was another sign of voters' renewed interest in Clark, and a renewed life for a campaign many pundits seemed to write off by the middle of November. After he started with a splash in the national media, then made a well-publicized gaffe about his stance on the war in Iraq, Clark lingered for a while in the single digits in the polls. He registered little national attention even when he rose to third place in New Hampshire behind Senator John F. Kerry.
snip
...Clark's candidacy is still premised largely on his electability, and it's on those grounds that some New Hampshire voters now say they're giving Clark a close look. "I guess there's a big difference between who I like and who I think is electable," said Duncan Watson, 40, a Walpole resident who spent his lunch hour at the Peterborough forum and says he is leaning toward Clark. "I think that a lot of people saw Dean early. He was politicking in New Hampshire right from the get-go," Watson said.
snip- where talks about Deans support among young and female voters holding steady.
snip-where talks about woman/Clark support. Military background as issue for some.
And Clark's not-very-soldierlike demeanor -- with his small frame and quiet way of talking, he doesn't seem the stereotypical military man -- has left some women pleasantly surprised.
"People are always completely different in person that what you see on the news," said Jennifer Wood, 63, an artist and dog trainer who lingered after the Peterborough forum, contemplating whether to support Clark or Dean. "He wasn't as forceful as we expected. He was milder." Bennett said women have also been responding well to Clark's most recent television ad, which features a black woman who worked under Clark as an Army major and who says that he was "very supportive of women" and "makes everybody feel important...snip
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/primaries/new_hampshire/articles/2004/01/10/clark_makes_inroads_on_nh_trail/
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