Political tourists pour into New Hampshire

Reporting from Manchester, N.H. —  The students in Mr. Walsh’s government and politics class at Franklin High School south of Boston were up well before the crack of dawn Monday.

By 7:30 a.m., after two hours on a bus, they were across the Massachusetts-New Hampshire state line and eating breakfast at Moe Joe’s Family Retreat, waiting to meet GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul. By 8 a.m., they’d been sucked into a political vortex and spit out the other side.

It was exactly what they’d hoped for.

“All of a sudden, there were all the lights,” said John Weich, 18. The 76-year-old Texas congressman materialized at his table in a crush of cameras, a delicious crumb surrounded by ravenous ants.

“I just said ‘Hi.’ I didn’t know what to do, it was so overwhelming,” Weich said. “I have never had that experience; I felt like everyone was just watching me. Now he’s gone.”

There’s almost no snow on the ground in New Hampshire, candidates keep fleeing to South Carolina to campaign and Mitt Romney’s dominance has sucked the suspense out of the room. Around here, there’s a feeling that the 2012 presidential campaign’s first primary is a little bit lacking in the hoopla department.

But there is one citizen sector that floods this chilly zone with excitement and anticipation — out-of-towners like Weich who pour into the state hoping to meet potential future presidents. In the fall, the countryside is crowded with leaf peepers. Now, the place is crawling with primary peepers.

They are students, tourists from the U.S. and abroad, curious citizens and activists itching for a confrontation they might never get at home, where contact with candidates comes through a television.

Take Julie Kushner, a United Auto Workers official from Connecticut.

At the end of a tame breakfast forum in Nashua on Monday, Kushner strode to the microphone to demand that Mitt Romney explain his position that GM should have been allowed to go bankrupt. After a bit of verbal sparring, the crowd gave Romney a standing ovation, effectively ending the exchange.

Curiosity motivated Allison Labate, a 50-year-old business manager from Vermont who lost her job just before Thanksgiving. On Saturday evening, she watched the candidates’ debate on television and was energized by Rick Santorum’s feisty performance. She Googled him Sunday and discovered he’d be in the Granite State on Monday.

“I thought, my God, I can hear this guy speak! It’s right in my backyard!” said Labate, her eyes wide with excitement. “I don’t have to go all the way to Iowa!”

The state does not actively court primary peepers (a phrase coined by a friend of New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner). “They’re going to come anyway,” said Tai Freligh, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Travel and Tourism Development. His office provides the usual kind of help to visitors, including answering questions like “Where did Hillary cry?” (That would be the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth, which does not advertise its place in history, according to a staff member who answered the phone there Monday.)

Tourism officials, hoteliers and restaurateurs love the influx of outsiders, but actual New Hampshire voters sometimes feel put out. They expect their face time with candidates and sometimes resent the interlopers who get in the way.

On Saturday, in a historic barn in Hollis, killing time before an appearance by Santorum, state Sen. James Luther asked how many people were out-of-towners. Easily three-quarters of the spillover crowd of more than 250 raised their hands. Where were they from? Massachusetts. Rhode Island. Maine. Pennsylvania. And Barbados.

“A crown colony,” Luther noted.

Some locals were unhappy about being left in the cold. “This is our primary!” a woman yelled. “We have our people that are from Hollis that would like to hear Rick!” Santorum placated the locals — or rather, potential supporters — by speaking with them before going inside.

Inside, a Massachusetts man raised his hand and announced, “I’m a political tourist.”

“How many political tourists are here in the room?” Santorum asked. Many hands went up. “Wow,” he said.

Soon, Santorum announced that he would take questions only from people with New Hampshire driver’s licenses. “Because I sorta want to talk to them right now about what their concerns are,” he said.

“Are we taking away from New Hampshirites?” asked Michael Walsh, the government teacher from Franklin High School. “I don’t think so. These kids have as much of a right to see Dr. Paul and the other candidates as anyone else.”

Foreigners love the chance to soak in the odd stew that is the American electoral system.

“You guys have the most advanced campaigns,” said Marc Timmermans, 22, visiting from Amsterdam. He and a friend, Tos Hartog, were in Concord at a rally for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. “We’re here to learn and also a little bit just to enjoy the spirit here because it’s very different in the Netherlands to get people this excited.” He was surprised by the atmosphere at a Romney town hall in Exeter on Sunday. “I’ve never seen that kind of energy before.”

Some come for the politics but are delighted to be able to rub elbows with the pundits and political media stars whose faces are familiar from network and cable TV.

“It’s a lot of fun to see the news personalities,” said Pete Frasca, a retiree from Scituate, Mass., who, with his wife, Claire, stood at the back of a crowded event in Manchester for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The Frascas had seen Chris Matthews, David Corn, David Gregory and “the whole MSNBC crew,” including Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of “Morning Joe” at the Radisson Hotel, a hub of celebri-media activity.

One New Hampshirite, a judge who did not want to be named because he thought it would be inappropriate to comment on the political scene, has worked in GOP politics, including high-dollar fundraisers where people spend thousands to get their photos taken with would-be presidents.

“Every time the shutter went off on the camera, I’d think to myself, ‘Come to New Hampshire and you get this for free.’ If someone was smart,” he added, “they would set up tours: Primary Peeping Tours.”

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

mark.barabak@latimes.com

Times staff writers Michael A. Memoli and Paul West contributed from Manchester, Maeve Reston from Nashua and Seema Mehta from Concord.