N.H. McCain backers will fight on

Redoubling efforts in face of poll results

John McCain, shown yesterday with Sarah Palin in Hershey, Pa., may be facing an uphill battle in New Hampshire, but his loyalists say that he has been in that position before. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

FRANKLIN, N.H. - On a wintry night nine years ago, Bill Grimm introduced John McCain at a town hall meeting. He kept it short, sensing how wild the crowd was to hear the candidate: "I felt like I was between a lion and a piece of meat." One sunny afternoon in September 2007, down in the polls and hard-up for money, McCain brought his "No Surrender Tour" to Grimm's front yard. Flanked by his old war buddies, McCain reaffirmed his commitment to the troop surge in Iraq, starting what became the resurrection of his beleaguered campaign.

Moments like these give Grimm faith McCain can still win New Hampshire - and perhaps the presidency. But he worries.

"I just feel sorry for him, because I don't think the country is able to see what we saw in John McCain," he said, sitting at his kitchen table yesterday morning. "I believe, and I've always believed, he really honestly feels that doing what's best for the country is the most important thing."

Less than a week before Election Day, polls show McCain struggling - even here, in the state that first fell in love with him nearly a decade ago and twice rescued his presidential ambitions from oblivion. Exasperated and fearing a Democratic landslide, Republicans across the country have lashed out at McCain's campaign as too timid or too erratic.

In New Hampshire, there is some discontent, too. A top campaign official publicly objected when the national campaign made phone calls attacking Democrat Barack Obama in the state, and former governor and longtime McCain supporter Walter Peterson said he fears the campaign's top brass has alienated too many New Hampshire independents by catering to social conservatives.

McCain loyalists in New Hampshire cite other frustrations as well: the mainstream media, which seems to them terribly biased toward Obama; the impersonal nature of a general election campaign, which features none of the town hall meetings and personal contact that helped voters get to know McCain so well; the young people who appear to them to value talk more than action.

But they are a long way from giving up.

"Fighting to the end is the best thing," Peterson said.

They vow to outwork Obama supporters, even if they are outnumbered. Many refuse to believe the polls, particularly the ones in New Hampshire that show their candidate as many as 15 percentage points behind Obama. There is a reason, after all, they are called "McCainiacs."

"He's going to be so happy when he sees all of his hard work here paying off," said Patsy Petit, a 58-year-old Latin teacher, with a conspiratorial smile as she took a break at the campaign's state headquarters in Manchester the other night.

Petit has been a fan of McCain since the spring of 1999, when she happened on a town hall event in Bedford. She concluded that McCain was a "very caring, honest person" and that serving his country was his sole agenda. Petit worked tirelessly for his campaign that year, as she did last year, even when his campaign seemed all but lost. Believing in New Hampshire voters' special relationship with McCain when the chips are down seems only logical to her.

"They're sensible," she said. "They've met him. They read. They don't go on gut reaction. That's New Hampshire. As far as the rest of the country . . ." She smiled, a little less certainly. "I hope they're thinking and reading too."

Around her, about a dozen other volunteers quietly went about their phone calls. The campaign's state headquarters, in a cavernous loft space in a renovated mill building, looked shipshape. At the entrance, a spare couch sat next to a row of flags. Even the candy was neatly contained in two large bowls.

But it lacked the happy buzz in the air at the Obama headquarters a few blocks away, where several dozen staff and volunteers chattered busily in a sprawling suite of offices that resembled messy dorm rooms. Homemade treats were piled on one table, while a cluster of middle-aged women painted signs around another. Someone had written "YAY!" in masking tape on the floor.

The McCainiacs are more dogged than joyful. Monday afternoon, Jim McConaha, cochairman of "Citizens for McCain" in the state, dropped campaign literature in Penacook, a village on the north side of Concord and home to many moderate Republicans, Reagan Democrats, and independents. Nobody was home, but McConaha checked off each house on his list, careful not to skip a single one.

"If signs mean anything, there's a real balance here," he said. A white clapboard house with black shutters had a McCain sign, as did a ranch-style house with a dozen or so antennas.

McConaha said he believes Obama is too inexperienced to be president.

He finds McCain's biography so inspirational that he just finished his ninth book about him. But he believes McCain's national campaign has gotten too mired in the details of his economic plan and has lost sight of the big themes, like service to country and his willingness to stand up to his own party, that distinguish him.

"I would like to see a broader vision for the country," McConaha said. "It takes courage to be a reformer; McCain's got it and he needs to talk about it more."

Leaning back from his kitchen table, Grimm could give no simple prescription for victory. He is continuing to give out yard signs, staying in touch with his veterans network, and hoping for the best - hoping that New Hampshire, and the rest of the country, sees the McCain that New Hampshire once did.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.