Kids will get the day off from school on Election Day. Some workers will have a holiday, too.
Mandy Macleod will take a bit longer, but she won’t be taking it easy. She plans to take both that Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 3, off from work to knock on doors, campaign for Democrats in New Hampshire and get her neighbors to vote.
“I wanted to do what I could,” Macleod said about supporting public officials who share her values.
She’s already excited to do that work — she spent a picturesque fall afternoon knocking on doors this weekend — but it helps that former presidential candidate and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Concord to help rally the troops.
In a short speech, Buttigieg roused a small crowd and commended the actions taken to defy President Donald Trump — marching in “No Kings” protests and writing to their elected officials. He said American citizens will have the most influence on Nov. 3.
“This is the moment where maximum power comes back into the hands of citizens, and there is no better place to get back in touch with the American tradition of citizen power than the Granite State,” Buttigieg said in a small but crammed room at the New Hampshire Democratic Party headquarters before they dispersed across the city to canvass for Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander and Democrats down the ballot.
He encouraged people to reach out to those he likes to call “future former Republicans” who are ready to flip from Trump and invite them into the fold — a message that echoes the one he preached in his last visit to Concord, this February.
“People are ready to hear us, but how we use that opening is everything. We’re not going in there, we’re not going on somebody’s porch to say, ‘I told you so,'” Buttigieg said. “We’re on that porch to say, ‘These guys don’t deserve you. Let’s work together to get something different.'”
He took the opportunity to ding Trump and congressional Republicans on unpopular policies like the war in Iran, tariffs and corruption in the White House.
Buttigieg has spent the better part of this year campaigning for Democrats across the country in the upcoming midterm elections but remains coy about his plans for 2028.
Macleod, for one, saw him speak in February and hopes to see him atop the ballot one day.
“He was so eloquent and then he gave me such hope that, you know what? We’ll hopefully get some adults in the room again,” Macleod said.
Before joining Democrats in Concord — joined by U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, Goodlander, Concord Mayor Byron Champlin and local candidates for the state House of Representatives — Buttigieg spent the morning with Goodlander at the Deerfield Fair.
On Friday, he campaigned with Congressman Chris Pappas, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, in Manchester and rallied a crowd in Rochester around Pappas, Cinde Warmington, the Democratic candidate for governor, and Stefany Shaheen, daughter of the senator who is running for Congress in New Hampshire’s first district.
