The quadrennial presidential primary, Gittell said, ''is still a very low percentage of our gross state product. Tight races on both the Democratic and Republican sides led to big advertising buys, and to intense media interest. And the media horde just seems to keep growing. Now there are hundreds - and people from all of them show up. The New Hampshire primary is not just a national political story, but an international one, Gittell points out, the first step in electing the man who will become the most powerful leader in the world.
Television crews come from Korea, England and Japan.
They come with expense accounts and charge cards and dirty laundry and appetites. When NBC technicians started to arrive here, they realized with some panic that a lot of their equipment was stranded by the snowstorm that came between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. She was dispatched to Staples with a corporate credit card. They were just sending me over there getting these huge loads of things,'' she said. The network, she said, had already bought a fax machine and computer printer.