NHPrimary.com: McCain starts major New Hampshire pushBy JEFFREY MERRITT
The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H.
January 4, 2000
Web posted at: 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT)
 AMHERST, New Hampshire (The Telegraph of Nashua) -- Kicking off an intensive month of campaigning in New Hampshire on Monday night, Republican presidential candidate John McCain touched on issues ranging from Russia's new leader to high-tech companies using foreign workers.
Making his second visit to the Amherst Middle School, the U.S. senator from Arizona fielded questions for an hour in front of a standing-room-only crowd.
His visit began a four-day swing through the state's southern tier that will conclude with a Republican debate at the University of New Hampshire on Thursday night.
McCain is planning to spend some 20 days in New Hampshire between now and the Feb. 1 primary, which is especially vital for him because he is not campaigning actively in Iowa.
Amherst resident Dwayne Jeffrey said his son-in-law had trouble getting a high-tech job in the Nashua area, and he questioned McCain's support for increasing the number of foreigners permitted to come to the United States as temporary workers.
"I hate to have you be the guy I'm attacking on this, but you're the one I trust the most so go for it," Jeffrey told the candidate.
McCain said the growth in technology-related jobs had created demand for these workers, so that they were not displacing American workers. Jeffrey was unconvinced, but said after the forum that he was likely to support McCain anyway.
"It's just that I think he's a lot more honest," he said. "The other candidates give a lot of pat answers."
McCain has climbed in polls of New Hampshire voters to equal or surpass Texas Gov. George W. Bush in recent weeks. The crowd at Monday's event was three times as large as the audience for a similar McCain event at the middle school two months ago, with dozens of people standing along the edges of the cafeteria because all the seats were filled.
"We don't know how this election is going to turn out," said former Sen. Warren Rudman, a leading McCain supporter. "But we appear to be doing much better than anyone ever dreamed that we could."
Asked what he could do to stop pork-barrel spending in Congress, McCain vowed that he would single out senators and representatives who sponsored wasteful projects and "make 'em famous." Much of that spending is inserted into legislation behind closed doors and approved without being understood, he said.
"You've got to put sunshine on them, because the American people are sick and tired of being sick and tired of this and it's got to stop," McCain said.
As is his custom, McCain mixed serious discussion of policy with a steady stream of anecdotes and jokes. When one questioner mentioned Al Gore, McCain was quick to poke fun at the vice president.
"He also invented the Internet, and I invented television," McCain said, drawing laughs. "Are you enjoying your television? I invented television."
Touching on former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's New Year's Eve resignation, McCain said he was "not overly optimistic" about acting President Vladimir Putin's commitment to freedom and democracy.
"The sad fact is that Russia today has been taken over by kleptocrats, Mafia-like figures who control so much of Russia today that it will be difficult for them to recover from that," he said.
McCain also criticized the Clinton administration's conduct of foreign policy, declaring that the U.S. needs to assert itself as the leading power on the world stage without overreacting to international conflicts.
"That does not mean sending our troops willy-nilly around the world every place there seems to be a real or perceived problem," he said.
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