Gregory Chase, the 27-year-old hedge fund manager from Nashua who's also Mike Gravel's biggest backer in New Hampshire, was already willing to pay a lot for his one-man pro-Gravel media campaign. Yesterday, he upped the ante, big time.

The Monitor wrote last week about Chase's effort to drum up support for Gravel by buying ads in the state's major newspapers. The ads urge readers to take a fresh look at Gravel, the former Alaska senator who's finished dead last in nearly every Democratic primary poll. Chase also offered $1 million to NBC, which left Gravel out of the debate it hosted in Philadelphia last night.

Chase had already spent more than $100,000 for his effort, which he's waging without the consultation of Gravel's official campaign. But the price tag took a big jump yesterday after Chase purchased ads in the largest newspapers in the country: USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, among others.

Those ads cost another $250,000, Chase told us yesterday by phone from Philadelphia, where he was planning to hear Gravel speak at a café while his opponents debated nearby at Drexel University. Chase was busy putting up Gravel signs and handing out fliers in the neighborhood. Though he'll be in the same room as Gravel, Chase told us he wouldn't speak to the candidate, to ensure he doesn't break campaign finance laws that forbid collusion between campaigns and independent spenders.

"I'll be there, though I won't make an effort to talk with him," Chase said.

A big endorsement

John Edwards snagged a big endorsement last night: The 9,000-member New Hampshire State Employees Association threw its support behind the North Carolina Democrat.

"I was impressed that Edwards not only talks about unions when he is in front of a union audience, he supports unions when he talks to a business audience," Department of Health and Human Services employee Ken Roos said in a statement.

The SEA's leaders have been getting plenty of loving from presidential candidates this month after its parent union, the Service Employees International Union, set state chapters loose to endorse as they saw fit. Bill Clinton phoned in for a conference call last week. Barack Obama popped by the office last Monday. And, of course, Edwards made his case.

The national SEIU set its member unions free because it couldn't reach a consensus, which was seen as a blow to Edwards, who had worked hard to build close ties with the union.

Now, spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said, Edwards has secured the endorsements of 12 SEIU state branches (including the Iowa chapter). And with the nod of the New Hampshire union, the 90,000-strong SEIU union in Massachusetts now has the green light to travel north and campaign for their guy.

In a statement, the campaign rejoiced, saying Edwards "looks forward to working with the men and women of SEIU in New Hampshire to build One America where every single American has health care coverage and where everyone who works hard has the chance to get ahead."

My bad

Twenty years later, Frank Fahey finally got his apology.

Fahey, a former teacher from Claremont, had an unexpected brush with fame in 1987 when he asked Joe Biden, then a candidate in the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, about his academic record. Biden, to put it mildly, flipped out. Among other things, Biden told Fahey that he had a higher IQ than Fahey and misstated his law school class rank. The outburst was one of several missteps that eventually ruined Biden's candidacy.

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