Live Free and Meet Richardson, Biden and Huckabee in NH

Jul 8th, 2007 12:00 PM UTC
By Matthew Bartlett

This past Friday was a busy day for the ONE Campaign in New Hampshire. Many volunteers from both sides of the aisle came out to candidate events to show support for ONE Vote ’08 and the world’s poorest people.

At a public library in Candia, NH, Gov. Richardson stopped in to speak with voters. In his stump speech, he spoke about the need for American foreign policy to focus more on issues like Darfur, AIDS and poverty in Africa.

After his speech, I spoke with Gov. Richardson and thanked him for talking about the world’s poorest people. I even brought up the fact that in the last debate, Gov. Richardson said that President Bush has done some good work for Africa with the Millennium Challenge Corporation and AIDS in Africa. Gov. Richardson smiled and said, “Well doesn’t he deserve some credit for that”, and told me that we can do even more. The governor said that he believes in the mission of the ONE Campaign in his heart.

Later that day, we ran into Sen. Joe Biden at a diner in Manchester. ONE members were able to talk with Sen. Biden about the Education for All Act. ONE’s Marine, Michael, told Sen. Biden that there are 77 million children in the world that are not enrolled in primary school and that creates an atmosphere where terrorists can set up madrassas to fill the educational needs. Michael urged Sen. Biden to sign onto the Education for All Act, which will help get millions of children, especially girls, in the developing world enrolled in to primary basic education.

Sen. Biden told Michael that he was “exactly right” and that one of favorite quotes is that “if you don’t visit the bad guys’ neighborhood, the bad guys’ neighborhood will visit you”. Sen. Biden seemed to endorse the idea and said that he would look into adding his name to the Education for All Act.

Ask any ONE volunteer and they can tell you that it can be hard work using your voice on the campaign trail. So on Friday night, ONE member Andrea Synborski decided to relax and attend a concert. But this was not any concert, this concert was with Presidential hopeful Gov. Mike Huckabee and his band, “Capitol Offense”. Andrea was able to talk with Gov. Huckabee and tell him about the ONE Campaign. Gov. Huckabee said that AIDS and poverty in Africa was an important issue to him and recognized the ONE band immediately. Andrea said that he put it on immediately, and even wore it during his concert.

From town hall, to the main streets, from diners to rock concerts, ONE Vote ’08 is engaging all of the candidates to make sure they know it is time to make poverty history”.

TAGS: Gov. Huckabee, ONE Vote 08, The ONE Blog