Protesters quiz Perry sharply in N.H.

By Ben Wolford, Globe Correspondent

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Far from a leisurely grip and grin at a downtown café, Texas Governor Rick Perry encountered a wall of protesters and faced sharp questions in a morning campaign stop here today, his second day in New Hampshire.

Hecklers carrying signs shouted from the sidewalk, “Stop attacking middle class families, Rick Perry,” as the smiling new presidential candidate shook hands and signed autographs. Perry, who declared his candidacy Saturday, was much more warmly received at visits today to Dover and Pembroke.

For every admirer in Portsmouth who commended his work, there were several detractors armed with chiding questions about climate change, Social Security, or human evolution.

“How old do you think the Earth is?” asked a little boy as his mother egged him on.

“You know what, I don’t have any idea,” Perry responded, hunched at eye-level. “I know it’s pretty old. It goes back a long, long way. I’m not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely.”

He added that evolution is “a theory that’s out there, and it’s got some gaps in it.”

“Ask him why he doesn’t believe in science,” the mother prompted.

For his part, Perry shied from conversations about his scientific views and focused on jobs and the economy, blasting the Obama administration for too much regulation and taxation. Those ideas resonated with many who came to see him at a diner in Dover.

“We need government out of the way because the private sector is the solution,” he told a crowd at Epoch Homes modular home manufacturing plant in Pembroke.

William O’Brien, the Republican House speaker in New Hampshire, said Perry’s controversial statements about global warming and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will not be sticking points for the state’s GOP voters.

“I think we still have a concern in New Hampshire about jobs,” O’Brien said after Perry’s question and answer session in Pembroke. “We have a concern in New Hampshire about our young people leaving the state.”