{"id":106734,"date":"2016-02-10T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T14:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-native-visits-new-hampshire-for-primary-excitement\/"},"modified":"2016-02-10T07:01:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T14:01:00","slug":"durango-native-visits-new-hampshire-for-primary-excitement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-native-visits-new-hampshire-for-primary-excitement\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango native visits New Hampshire for primary excitement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Presidential
Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, a Republican U.S. senator from Florida, signs autographs during a campaign stop at The Village Trestle tavern in Goffstown, N.H. the afternoon before the New Hampshire primary.<\/span>Edward Graham\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

MANCHESTER, N.H. \u2013 The day before the New Hampshire primary saw a flurry of campaign activities, as presidential candidates from both political parties readied for their last-minute push toward a strong Election Day showing. At a campaign stop at The Village Trestle tavern in Goffstown, N.H., U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., greeted about a hundred supporters and reporters during a 30-minute visit to the local establishment. Arriving after light snow began to fall, Rubio entered to a quick introduction followed by loud cheers of \u2018Marco!\u2019 from the waiting crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about all the things that are going wrong in America, and we have problems,\u201d Rubio said, contrasting his message with that of some of his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls. \u201cBut we should not confuse our government and our people. Our country is not a government. Our country is our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a largely forgettable performance during Saturday night\u2019s Republican presidential debate, Rubio is hoping for a strong showing in Tuesday\u2019s Republican primary election to bolster his strong third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. The latest polls show him in second or third-place behind the current Republican leader, Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Judy Black, a resident of the Washington, D.C.-area who was born in Durango, was on hand to see Rubio. Black and several friends came up to spend three days experiencing the primary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been involved in Republican Party stuff for years, and so this year we just came up to watch all the action because we think we\u2019ve got a really great, great group of people running,\u201d Black said. \u201cSo we wanted to come up and support them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that she arrived on Sunday and had already seen former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Bush campaign surrogate Lindsey Graham in the short time she had been in the state.<\/p>\n

Black\u2019s roots in Colorado, as well as her interest in politics, run deep. Her father, Walter Bergman, served as the football, basketball and baseball coach for Fort Lewis College from 1947 to 1950. When she was a little over 2 years old, her family moved to Grand Junction, where her father coached at Mesa State College for the next few decades. Her sister, Jane Norton, also served as the 46th lieutenant governor of Colorado from 2003 to 2007.<\/p>\n

Black, who currently works in government relations, said she\u2019s been involved in politics for a number of years. One of the memories she shared was of Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, back when he was still a teenager.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott and I were in the \u201976 delegation from Colorado together for Ronald Reagan, Black said. \u201cSo Scott was 19 years old, and he was the youngest delegate in the country at the Republican convention. We were \u2018crazy right-wing Republicans\u2019 in those days, because in \u201976 we were delegates for Reagan against an incumbent president, Gerald Ford, who I think everybody liked, but we just wanted Ronald Reagan more. We weren\u2019t successful that year, but we got the president elected then after that. Tipton and I still laugh about being in that delegation together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about her current political leanings, Black said she was still unsure but was strongly considering Rubio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the message of his family and what he\u2019s done, and I believe that that\u2019s a great message for all Americans,\u201d Black said. \u201cAnd I watched him in the Senate where he\u2019s been very, very strong on national defense issues. He understands what we\u2019re up against with these foreign threats, and he\u2019s always been good on fiscal matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

egraham@durangoherald.com<\/a>. Edward Graham is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald. He is spending the next few days reporting on the New Hampshire presidential primary from Manchester, N.H.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

unsure of who\u2019ll she\u2019ll support, but pleased with choices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[950,551,299,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-106734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-durango","tag-frontpage-feature-box","tag-national-elections","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106734"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=106734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}