Hrakin appeals to voters with 'Heartland' theme

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- While downtown's Elm Street hummed yesterday with election day activity, the sounds of 10,000 Maniacs came floating in over the usual din of late afternoon traffic. Hidden from sight at first, the source of the tunes soon rolled around the corner and drove into view as curious onlookers watched in amusement. It was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin's "Heartland Express" Winnebago van, and it was blaring rock-n-roll as it cruised around the city in an effort to drum up last minute support for Harkin. Harkin, who was tied with Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey for third place in the polls last week, was trying to avoid his eventual fourth-place finish in the election primary. The van's chief destinations included all of the polling centers around Manchester, where an army of campaign supporters followed voters after wooing them from street corners all weekend. As the van rolled along, volunteer coordinator Bill Batson shouted through a megaphone, rattling off one Harkin slogan after another. "Come ride the Heartland Express," he said. "Next stop, the White House. Help hard-workin' Tom Harkin give George Herbert Hoover Bush a pink slip." Inside the van, a handful of confident Harkin volunteers, including several high-school and college students, discussed their candidate as they made sandwiches for dozens of Harkin volunteers manning the polling stations. Denise Larochelle, a sophomore at Notre Dame College in Manchester who came along for the ride, had no trouble explaining her support for Harkin as she glopped her mayonnaise on a piece of bread. "I like him mainly because of his views on education and his support for early childhood programs and women's issues," she said. "And his record shows he does things rather than just talk." Harkin supports increased funding for the Head Start program to improve early childhood instruction, and he is a firm supporter of abortion rights, like the other Democratic candidates. His plan for higher education, which would create a sort of non-military version of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, would enable students to pay back government student loans by teaching for a couple of years or providing a similar service to the community. The other students riding in the van -- as well as many students working for the other candidates in New Hampshire this week -- could not articulate the reasons for their support. Keri Boehne, a high school senior from Boston, Massachusetts, said she "did a little research" on Harkin over the summer which convinced her that the senator "really works for the people." But when asked to elaborate on what she meant, she could only muster the same fallback that dozens of students here have used to explain their own support: "He seems like a real presidential candidate who can beat [President] Bush." At separate rallies held on Monday for Kerrey, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, several students listed "electability" as the number one reason for their support. Yet most of these students did not say what they hope their candidate would do after the election if he were, in fact, able to beat his Republican opponent. During a quick stop at a polling center, Larochelle said many of her friends at school picked a candidate "just because they're anti-Bush, not because they like what a candidate stands for." "People too often decide who they like by looking at the polls," she continued. "But just picking the front-runner is not good enough." Kate Kilroy, a freshman at Boston University, said she supports Harkin because he "seems like a guy who's really got the vision." What that vision might be, however, she could not say. But she said she feels Harkin is not "full of shit" like the other Democrats in the race and is the biggest advocate for blue collar workers among them. And, like the others, Kilroy added that Harkin was the only candidate capable of defeating Bush in the fall.

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