New Hampshire's Portsmouth Herald profiles Doug and Stella Scamman, often called "the first family of Republican politics" in the state that traditionally is home to the first presidential primary each election cycle.
The two have had their hand in mixing down-home cooking with Republican candidates for more than 40 years now. And literally thousands have spent time on the Scammans' Bittersweet Farm over the past decades, eating dinner and listening to candidates pitch their bid for one office or another. Theirs is a down-home brand of politics that Doug thinks is not in danger of disappearing, despite the Internet and other modern methods of politicking.
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"I don't think any of these candidates would dare not to come here and talk to everybody here in New Hampshire," Doug Scammans said. Meeting New Hampshire's political savvy public separates the men from the boys in the presidential primary. New Hampshire residents ask tough questions. "It's a good sifting process to eliminate those that really aren't that deep in their thought process," Doug said.
And the Republican eating events will continue. Face-to-face politics is the best way. "It brings the process much closer to the people," Stella said. "They're more apt to get out to vote than if they've just seen them on TV. When you look people in the eye and they talk to you and answer a question, you can sense whether or not they're BS-ing you or whether they're speaking from the heart, and I think that's important in New Hampshire."
Read the whole tale here.
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