Make room for Santorum
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Kate Chase carries her 8-week-old daughter, Eva, from an over-capacity room where former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, background, was speaking Friday in Keene, N.H.
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MANCHESTER, N.H. -- You want to take this outside?
That's become the tone -- and the result -- of Republican candidate Rick Santorum's upstart campaign for president in the final days before New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.
"I remember three weeks ago, we were fighting to get 25, 30 people in a room," said Mike Biundo, Mr. Santorum's national campaign manager. "Now look at us."
Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, conducted three town hall meetings Friday, two of which ran into problems when the number of people who attended exceeded the capacity of the rooms.
Police in Keene, N.H., interrupted a morning event in the basement of the Keene Public Library when an estimated 300 people tried to cram into a room that the fire code limits to 137 occupants. Those in the aisles were ushered into the hallway and an adjoining room, where they could barely hear the candidate.
Friday evening, the local fire marshal ordered the gathering of more than 200 voters and members of the news media out of the Belmont Banquet Hall in Manchester, forcing organizers to put their candidate behind a makeshift podium in the parking lot.
It's a long way from the arenas that President Barack Obama filled when he was a candidate four years ago, but for Mr. Santorum, it's a big step in the right direction.
"It's going great," Mr. Biundo said. "There's a lot of momentum and the crowds are getting bigger. There's more TV cameras. We're going to have to get bigger venues. The problem is that we've mailed out a lot of emails telling people where he's going to be, and now we might have to move."
Mr. Santorum's transformation from a voice in the wilderness to a voice that is difficult to hear because of the crowd is a result of his surprisingly strong showing in last week's Iowa caucuses, where he finished neck-and-neck with frontrunner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
Recent polls show Mr. Romney with a strong lead over Mr. Santorum going into tonight's debate here, but that's nothing new to the former Penn Hills congressman. Polls showed him trailing in Iowa, too.
The higher profile, however, has also made Mr. Santorum a popular target with protesters and hecklers, who have booed and tried to shout him down during the give-and-take of the town hall meetings. Thursday afternoon, he endured catcalls while defending his opposition to gay marriage, and Friday morning he sparked grumbling when he was confronted by a woman concerned about the health costs for her son's cancer treatments.
First Published January 7, 2012 12:00 am
