Manchester, NH
With the help of Reagan NH Finance Chair Gerry Carmen, whom i met while interning at the RNC, I secured an interview in Manchester with NH Reagan-Bush E.D., Steven Thayer. After volunteering for three weeks at Reagan/Bush NH HQ on High Street, and insinuating myself on the office manager doing any job or task necessary, I was ultimately given a $40 per week job as “Town Chairman Coordinator.”
Ultimately, “Town Chairman Coordinator” was nothing more than a glorified name for my two key responsibilities: delivering signs and bumper stickers around the state to various town chairmen, and finding a replacement for an existing town chair if there was a vacancy. I didn’t care. I loved it — and succumbed to campaign fever.
To save money, I lived in my girlfriend’s all female dorm at Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH. After several weeks, the dorm supervisor discovered I was living there, but liked me. I didn’t bullshit her, and told her the truth: I was from DC working for Reagan and I’d be there until election day if she was okay with it. Three months in a girl’s dorm?
That was a big “ask” on my part. Fortuitously, she allowed me to stay in the dorm through the election so long as I was discrete and had taken a shower and out of the dorm by 6am.
After leaving the dorm every morning I’d either hitch down I-89 towards Manchester, about 45 minutes away, or take a bus from New London to Manchester via Concord, the state capitol.