MANCHESTER, N.H. – The excitement surrounding the Super Bowl 50 matchup between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers spilled over into the ongoing presidential campaign, as some candidates tried to use the NFL championship game to bolster their chances in the New Hampshire primary.
Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, hosted a Super Bowl pre-Game Party at The Yard Seafood & Steakhouse restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Fresh off her exclusion from Saturday night’s Republican Presidential Debate, hosted by ABC News, Fiorina drew clear parallels between her presidential campaign and the Broncos-Panthers matchup during the pre-game event.
“I can assure you, in both of those locker rooms right now, there is a coach sitting there talking to those teams and saying, ‘You know, we’ve had a great season, we’ve had a great run to this point, and it all comes down to this game now. It all comes down to the next couple hours, and you’re gonna have to fight for every yard and go the distance and win.’ And I feel like that’s kind of like where we are here,” Fiorina said. “You know? Everbody in this room, I know this.”
The latest polls of the New Hampshire Republican primary show Fiorina hovering between 4 percent to 6 percent of support.
Lexi Stemple Swearingen, senior communications advisor for the CARLY for America super PAC, was at Fiorina’s pre-game party. Swearingen, who lives in Pueblo, in southern Colorado, said many of the issues Carly focused on – such as veterans’ issues and small businesses – were especially relevant in Colorado. She said that the pre-game campaign event was a typical approach campaigns used to engage voters.
“Whenever there is a natural news event going on that’s inside an election cycle, it’s the best way we can acknowledge that it’s going on, and to basically approach people,” Swearingen said. “Politics is a part of your everyday life. People are here obviously to elect the next leader of our country, but they’re also everyday people.”
The crowd at the Fiorina event, full of New England Patriots’ fans, was overwhelmingly in favor of the Panthers. Fiorina said her campaign staff was evenly divided between both teams and that she was staying silent about her preference.
Fellow presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also hosted a Super Bowl watch party nearby in Manchester.
Saul Shriber, 60, a school teacher from Derry, N.H., attended the Fiorina event with his wife, Donna, to catch a glimpse of the candidate. Calling himself “your typical undecided voter,” Shriber said he’s attended seven different rallies, including two with Hillary Clinton and two for Chris Christie. Although he was ardently rooting against the Broncos in the Super Bowl, he said that he was impressed with Fiorina as a candidate but was leaning away from voting at all in the Republican primary.
“I’m hoping we’ll get rid of some of these other Republican candidates after the New Hampshire primaries and we’ll see more fruitful dialogue between the candidates, not this BS I see now,” Shriber said, saying he was leaning toward voting in the Democratic primary. “It’s just a lot of cutting of each other. It’s all personality they’re going after. It’s all personal. And I don’t wanna hear that personality so much.”
egraham@durangoherald.com. Edward Graham is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald. He is spending the next few days reporting on the New Hampshire presidential primary from Manchester, N.H.
