Clinton knocks on N.Hampshire doors

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire - Hillary Clinton went door-to-door in freezing New Hampshire on Saturday, asking for support in the early voting state where her once-huge lead in the Democratic presidential primary race has melted away.

The New York senator knocked on doors along a snow-covered block of Manchester, less than a month before the crucial January 8 New Hampshire primary, the second binding contest of the 2008 presidential campaign.

"I'd be honoured to have your support," Clinton said on the front porch of Mike Glickstein, a Manchester resident.

Glickstein, a 38-year-old maintenance worker whose beagle howled incessantly as he spoke to the former first lady, said he had intended to vote for Clinton already.

"I like her support of the middle class, I like her husband a lot," Glickstein said, referring to former President Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has seen her lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama, her main rival for the Democratic nomination, evaporate both in New Hampshire and Iowa, which on January 3 kicks off the state-by-state contests to choose the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

Two polls this week showed Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat in New Hampshire, each with the support of about 30 percent of voters. In September, Clinton had led Obama by 20 points.

PERSONAL CAMPAIGNING KEY

In a subsequent speech to voters in Plaistow, New Hampshire, Clinton said the state would be important to her efforts to secure her party's nomination.

"I'm counting on you for this primary election," she said. "It's a decision that I know you take very seriously. That's why you attend events like this, that's why you open your doors to us when we come knocking."

Clinton said that if elected she would work to find a way of providing universal health care to U.S. citizens, a fight she faced before as First Lady when her husband was president. She also said she would do away with the controversial education program No Child Left Behind and that if elected she would call on the leaders of the top emitters of greenhouse gases to meet every three months to agree on a solution to cut back their emissions.

Lou D'Allesandro, a New Hampshire state senator who accompanied Clinton as she knocked on about 10 doors, said personal campaigning was critical in his state.

"Politics is connecting with people, and this is how you do it here. I'd like to see her here more," he said.

Clinton's advisers once saw New Hampshire as a "firewall," which could protect her if she did poorly in Iowa, said University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala.

"The firewall has largely disappeared now," he said. "If she loses both ... it would be very difficult to recover."

After New Hampshire, the next big contest is in South Carolina, where the large black population could flock to Obama, a fellow African American, Scala said.

"She's very intelligent, she has a lot of charisma. I wish she would talk more about women, because I think that would be helpful," said Herb Meyer, a 50-year-old physician from Danville, New Hampshire, who turned out to see Clinton in Plaistow.

"She's got a lot of presence, Barack Obama has a lot of presence," Meyer said, adding that he wasn't yet sure for whom he would vote.