McCain depends on Jersey operator in key New Hampshire county

Hillsborough Co., NH - Joe Colletti first shook the hand of Arizona Sen. John McCain in the Short Hills Hilton back in 2006, not knowing then that he would soon work for the old war hero nursing longtime presidential aspirations with a last chance at the prize.

Colletti was toiling for state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr., at the time and McCain had landed in Jersey to support Kean's challenge of Sen. Robert Menendez.

"Youth," McCain said when asked why he thought Kean would be a good addition to the U.S. Senate, and a little later, on his way into the banquet hall where he would mount a stage in front of a mostly Somerset and Morris County crowd, he met the then 24-year old Colletti.

One of the first of a core of Kean staffers, Colletti had joined the campaign early - 15 months before Election Day. As the contest intensified, the U.S. Senate candidate dispatched Colletti to serve as field director for the campaign's central Jersey headquarters. That meant Colletti, who grew up in Linden and Warren, would be in charge of building political operations in Middlesex, Mercer, and Monmouth counties.

He developed a reputation as a smart and resourceful workhorse, who had motivational skills based more on calmly leading by example than in-your-face intimidation.

"What Joe Colletti had was an ability to get a ridiculous number of volunteers because everybody wanted to work for him," said Eric Sedler, a blogger for Red Jersey and political science student at Monmouth. "He had the ability to be personable to everyone, and to work harder than anyone."

Of course, Kean would lose to Menendez. But when his communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, signed on with the budding McCain presidential campaign, she remembered Colletti, and recommended that McCain recruit him, too.

Based on the work he did for Kean, Colletti said he was also courted by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as they began building their respective '08 teams.

As he assessed the three Republican presidential candidates and their respective qualities, Colletti decided to go with McCain because of what he saw as the Arizona senator's authenticity.

"The electorate is very pessimistic and distrustful about politicians, and McCain actually has the courage to say ‘I disagree with you,'" he said. "No one candidate is going to line up with someone on every issue, but McCain is honest and authentic in the stands he takes on different issues."

After Kean, Colletti took two months off before packing his gear and driving up to New Hampshire in January, 2007, where he started operations, and where he now serves as field coordinator for Hillsborough County, home to 30% of the state's voting population.

"What I learned mostly from working on the Kean campaign were the ins and outs of what it takes to build a campaign, and about the different personalities you have to deal with," said Colletti, who's doing the same thing up here as his candidate confronts a do-or-die scenario.

Uncompetitive in Iowa, McCain has to win in New Hampshire to stay in this race, and so he's staked everything on the granite state, effectively making Colletti his lieutenant in a ground game where political survival will be gloriously expectant of the next engagement in early primary states - or final.

The latest Washington Post poll has the McCain campaign in second place behind Romney, down by double digits.

"Arizona may be the only state on the union where mothers don't tell their children it's okay to grow up and be president," McCain told a crowd of New Englanders in Manchester's Derryfield School Wednesday evening, referring to a line of favorite son losers that includes Barry Goldwater, Morris Udall, Bruce Babbitt, and himself in 2000.

"Immigration is the thing that hurt him," said Sedler, a McCain supporter, who says his candidate's insistence on creating a legitimate path to citizenship for undocumented workers placed him out of synch with Republican primary voters.

But McCain's recognition of global warming, partnership with Sen. Russ Feingold to create campaign finance laws, and his support for stem cell research also put him at odds with hardliners in his party. And the war, which he fiercely continues to support, goes on, although he now takes some measure of vindication in observing decreased levels of violence in Iraq since the U.S. implemented a troop surge strategy.

"I don't think he's dead yet," said Sedler. "If he has any hope it's in New Hampshire. He received some good endorsements lately: the Union-Leader, former Gov. Tom Kean."

Peter Woolley, executive director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll, said in the remaining weeks McCain must woo those voters who supported him once before and gave him victory in New Hampshire over George W. Bush.

"There are people who love McCain and people who hate him," said Woolley. "Then there are those people who think he's yesterday's news. People in this last group are those he needs to concentrate on; those people who have abandoned his ship. How he solves that problem, and brings them back onboard, I don't really know."

On Wednesday night, Axel Rose's taped voice screamed, "Welcome to the Jungle, welcome to the jungle," in the small auditorium where half the crowd appeared to be composed of baseball fans in red jerseys. McCain's staff distributed cards featuring statistics for both McCain and Boston Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling, a former Arizona Diamondback and McCain supporter who joined him on-stage.

"As you listen to him speak, you understand that he wasn't born a politician, which is a beautiful thing for me," said Schilling to applause. "He's an American citizen first, and he's someone who cares about the greater good of people other than himself, or his party."

McCain recounted a story about his childhood hero, Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams, who was a fighter pilot in the Korean War and didn't eject from his burning aircraft after getting hit because he knew if he did he'd hurt his knees and never play ball again. Then the steely candidate melted in the face of a question about whether Schilling was his second favorite player of all time.

"I think I'd have to call it a tie," said the senator.

Behind the scenes, up in the crow's nest when a blinking McCain first appeared and requested that the lights be turned down so he could see the audience; running from one side of the auditorium to the other, directing volunteers, conducting an interview on the run, Colletti kept operating.

"I had my parents up to a campaign event, and they loved it," he said. "They told me politics up here in New Hampshire is the way it used to be in New Jersey. It used to be about issues and meeting one-on-one with people or in settings like this."

It's a quaint description of the public events that McCain attends everyday, Monday through Saturday, here in New Hampshire. But for McCain, there is nothing quaint about running behind, as old as he is now without a shot after this on his mortal horizon, where everything hinges on "Live Free or Die," and Colletti, believing in the message and messenger, goes at it hard.