Hometown Prankster Crashes Primary

Hudson, N.H.  — Midway through a town hall campaign event at Gilchrist Metal Fabricating Company, Chris Christie zeroed in on a man at left of center stage, four rows back, whose hand had been raised for four or five minutes.

“Sir,” Christie pointed to the man, a New Haven Democrat operating undercover as a Nashua native concerned about the economy.

“Hey thank you governor,” the man said. ​“I have a small business question.”

Christie, the New Jersey governor in the midst of a Republican presidential campaign, nodded, urging him to go on.

“There’s a lot of talk about raising the minimum wage — 10, 12, 15 bucks. And those guys [supporting the raise], they don’t own small businesses. A lot of small businesses are struggling. Will you give a commitment to fight any increases in minimum wage?”

Christie last year fought to stymie minimum wage increases in his home state of New Jersey, where the hourly wage has remained at $ 7.20. He now locked eyes with the questioner.

“I don’t need to give you a commitment, I’ve already done it,” he began. ​“I vetoed minimum wage increase in my own state because it was too aggressive, too quick, and was not fair. They wanted to raise it a buck-fifty an hour immediately in one fell swoop. And I said to the folks in the legislature, ​‘If you want to raise the minimum wage, we can raise it, but incrementally, slowly over time, so you [pointing to the man] as a small business owner can adjust.

“They wanted a dollar-fifty increase a year? I said no. I said: ​‘How ​‘bout 50 cents a year for three years?’ They rejected that. So we’re in this big fight. New Jersey … just proposed taking our minimum wage from eight dollars and change to 15. You know what’s gonna happen if that happens. People are gonna lose their jobs. I am not favoring any increase in minimum wage. It’s a tax on you!” 

“Thank you, governor,” the questioner said. Christie nodded with a smile.

For the rest of the town hall, the two continued a dialogue. When Christie proposed a national service option for student loan recipients, the questioner asked eagerly, ​“Can you do that to my taxes?” to a smattering of crowd applause. When Christie had thanked a veteran for his service, the questioner nodded vigorously and began a round of cheering. By the time he headed for the door, local reporters were making a beeline for him.

“Man,” a supporter said patting him on the back as he headed toward the back door 20 or so minutes later. ​“You’re our hero.”

And he was. Except for when he wasn’t.

Instead of a Nashua small businessman, the questioner was New Haven political provocateur Ed Anderson, a Bernie Sanders and campaign-finance reform supporter, stationed in Manchester since last weekend for the final leg of the campaign leading up to Tuesday’s presidential primary.

Anderson popped up in New Hampshire for the 2006 primary, and found he could bring campaigners’ prejudices to the surface and get media attention — while making a satirical political point —by masquerading as a Republican supporter urging America to ​“Bomb Iran! Vote McCain!”

He returned for this week’s primary campaign with a similar undercover satirical mission: To expose the bigotry and spectacle of many of the candidates, and to make a case for why the first-in-the-nation primary should be held in Connecticut instead of the Granite State. Using a mix of political improvisations, literal costume changes, and experimental theater to infiltrate events held by both parties Monday and Tuesday, he engaged with candidates whenever he saw the chance (or the ostensible need) to have them share belief systems, campaign strategies, and tidbits of politically unsavory information.

“We have better restaurants, better hotels … and it’s not so lilywhite!” he exclaimed Monday, once safely outside of the Christie rally. ​“Can you imagine if this was held in New Haven or Hartford?”

“Why Do You Take Their Money?”

From Christie’s rally, Anderson headed toward Manchester Community College, where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was preparing to give a last-day call-to-arms to over 1,000 of her supporters in the gymnasium.

Onstage, former New Hampshire Gov. and U.S. Sen. Jean Shaheen was already addressing the crowd. ​“Are you ready?” she spoke-sang over the microphone. ​“Do you believe in Hillary?!”

Loud whoops ensued. Snapping into character, Anderson pulled a hot pink Planned Parenthood shirt over his head, and disappeared into the crowd until the rally began.

“Don’t take away our rights!” people cheered as he passed them.

They’d boxed him in as an all-in-Hillary supporter too quickly. As Clinton approached the podium, the ​“Nashua small business owner” morphed into an ambivalent progressive, wary of Wall Street and big lobbyists.

When the candidate brought up her plan to rein in private lenders who handle student loans, a familiar, just slightly drawling voice went up from the back of the room: ​“Then stop taking money from em’!”

Clinton pressed ahead, not looking up. ​“Why do you take their money?!” the voice asked again.

The voice belonged to Anderson.

A redheaded woman toting a Hillary sign threatened to punch him in the face, placing her body squarely between his and several reporters who had taken interest.

“Well, ask yourself that,” Clinton suggested before turning back to the mic, and shrugging her shoulders. 

“The student-loan banking industry throws money around D.C. She goes to their parties. She takes their money. That’s how the game is played. And we’re being had,” Anderson mused later.

The Boston Globe reported on the exchange without naming Anderson:

“You take their money! You take their money!” yelled a man from Connecticut when Clinton mentioned her plan to regulate Wall Street banks.
Clinton soldiered on, without acknowledging the man at first.
​“And like President Obama, yes, I have donations. There’s no doubt about that.”
​“Why?” the man called out.
​“Well, you know, ask yourself. President Obama had a lot of donations. Did that stop him from signing Dodd-Frank? ” Clinton said, referring to the Wall Street reform and consumer protection legislation.”

Canadians For (Understanding) Cruz

By 2:30 p.m., when he pulled into the American Legion Henry J. Sweeney Post for a Republican Ted Cruz town hall event, Anderson was tired, a shadow collecting beneath his eyes. He’d already given two feature performances and been up for more than eight hours. So he hatched a plan: Put the hometown reporter trailing him to work.

From the front seat of his jeep, Anderson described the exercise: I would be a foreign journalist, perhaps a young reporter from France’s Le Canard Enchaîné or Ottawa’s Independent Writer’s Collective, hoping to get a clear answer on what the Tea Party stands for and why its constituents are relevant in the 2016 election. I agreed to go along.

I buried my press credentials in my media bag, trudged through the snow to the hall, and stuck out my hand to the first person I saw, a blonde-haired woman trying to shoo perennial protest candidate Vermin Supreme away from the building before Cruz arrived.

“Hi there,” I said in a not remotely Canadian accent. ​“I write for a little collective in Ottowa. Are you a Tea Party Republican?” To hear how that went, click on or download the audio above.

Stump, Then Dump, For Trump

Cruz’s Tea Party, Clinton’s hesitation on student loans, Christie’s vociferous defense of not raising the minimum wage — all meant to push candidates into admitting, as Anderson saw it, that they are some brand of whackadoodle — left one mission on the New Havener’s Monday agenda: A Donald Trump rally at the city’s Verizon Wireless Center. The only option to get and stay in was to masquerade as a fervent Trump supporter. 

Dressed in a pinstriped button down shirt, Yale Bulldogs jacket and red cap, Anderson staked out a patch of floor close to the stage, placed his hands in his pockets, and began to walk around the area, making his way to the only person of color — a reporter from Florida — he could find in the event of 5,000.

“Are you from New Hampshire?” he asked.

She guffawed. ​“Do I look like I’m from New Hampshire?” She motioned to the crowd, 100 percent Caucasian except for her, a Sikh man in the front row, and a few Quinnipiac and SUNY poli sci students who had come on assignment.

Anderson laughed. ​“Do I look like I’m a batshit crazy?” he asked in return.

Tuesday Newsday

As the snow abated and the first-in-the-nation primary began on Tuesday morning, candidates took to the polls to make surprise visits to their supporters. Anderson, braving the plummeting temperatures and buildup of ice on the streets, did too.

Outside of the Beech Street School in Manchester’s Ward 5, he took on lone Republican Ben Carson supporter Norm Farland. Farland, a Manchester resident, explained that he was stumping for the candidate because ​“he’s a man of strong conviction and morals” and believed in ending all abortions.

“Having the state tell women what to do with their bodies is ugly no matter which way you slice it,” Anderson countered, drawing a quick glare …

… before turning around, and asking Bernie Sanders supporters Carmella Rosenbach and Annie Ball (to whom he later referred as ​“rock stars”) to justify their support of the candidate. ​“He’s a socialist!” Anderson taunted them.

Anderson was an equal opportunity offender: There was a sudden shift in his ​“support” for The Donald, using it as grounds to for pictures at Trump’s HQ …

… and withTrump’s son Eric at a Starbucks on the fringes of town.

“Jebbie (!) just looks like a dog who wants to be put down,” he murmured in Eric’s ear as the camera clicked in the background. 

A Final Act

At 7 p.m., as the numbers were coming in, there was only one place to end the night before getting on the highway home to New Haven, Anderson said. And for the real-life Bernie fan, it wasn’t Sanders’ victory bash in Concord.

Making sure his ​“Trump/Make America Great Again!” stickers were securely hidden in a wad of cash and donning a red-and-black checkered shirt, he headed into Southern New Hampshire University. There, Hillary Clinton would deliver her concession speech a little after 9:30 p.m., with Bill and Chelsea at her side and New Haveners like Jason Bartlett (the city government’s youth services director) cheering on from the audience. 

Anderson wasn’t there to redeem himself from heckling the day before, he vowed as he entered, passing through metal detectors and pat-down searches. But once in the room, a jam-packed, sweltering gymnasium, he changed his tone, taking time to fret over evening results with a supporter who wished to be identified by her first name, Elizabeth …

Commiserating with Bartlett about how ​“screwed” the GOP was …

… and clapping, if grudgingly, after Clinton’s remarks.

As he trudged to his Jeep around 10 p.m. to begin the drive back to New Haven, fresh snow falling, Anderson suggested that he wasn’t quite done for the season.

”South Carolina’s going to be crazy,” he said. ​“Wanna go?”