In Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign office in Concord, New Hampshire this weekend, Bruce Mann stepped forward — donut box in hand — before about three dozen volunteers preparing to canvas for his wife’s campaign.
“My immediate role, of course, was to deliver the donuts,” he said to laughter.
But Mann’s new role as a campaign surrogate for his wife is about much more than dropping off sweets.
The Massachusetts senator and other presidential candidates are jockeying for front-runner status in New Hampshire in the nine weeks before the first-in-the-nation primary. Warren, who had a brief stint leading national polls early this fall, is deploying her husband as part of her efforts to bounce back.
As the soft-spoken, bespectacled professor took his place Saturday in front of the canvassers, he tucked his hands into khaki pants pockets and spoke less than smoothly about how Warren is a woman “with standards” who had to evaluate his teaching abilities before deeming him marriage-worthy, how she’s motivated by optimism, how her town hall meetings and teaching abilities would play into the crucial, presidential skill of coalition-building.
"You've been watching her teach,” he said, after most affirmed they’ve seen her at town hall meetings. “You've seen how she just connects with everyone. She just sort of reaches out and draws people in, and she reaches them where they are, and she brings them all together."
Mann sounded like far from a seasoned political orator, but in his new capacity as a surrogate, he's fulfilling a distinctive role — vouching for Warren's personality and values from an intimate vantage point. After he wrapped up his remarks, volunteers said they had gleaned new insights about the candidate.
“I thought it was great to get a picture of her relationship,” said Alice DonnaSelva, 58, of Concord. “I think it confirmed what I think about her as a teacher.”
Greg Goldberg, 41, who lives in Henniker, said he became “even more excited” about Warren after hearing Mann.
“I love the fact that she had to hear him teach before she’s like, ‘Okay, you’re good,’” Goldberg said, noting his own preference for “an escaped academic” president.
Stephanie Vazzano of Concord said she detected a sense of commitment from the spousal speech.
"I think it speaks to being able to maintain a positive relationship with someone, which is not an easy thing to do over multiple years and children and life things, and a presidential campaign,” said Vazzano, 33. “I think that people who are able to do that are incredibly strong and incredibly thoughtful and that, I think, reflects being able to be dedicated to other issues as well.”
Those positive reactions are precisely what Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said a spouse surrogate can elicit perhaps better than anyone else.
"A candidate’s spouse can give that glimpse into the inner life of a candidate that a candidate typically is trained not to do," Scala said. “Activists in New Hampshire put a high premium on their encounters with the candidates. … So to be able to meet — not just the candidate — but the candidate’s spouse [or] the candidate’s son or daughter adds to that closeness of the relationship the activist feels.”
Scala added that while husband surrogates are rare nationally, they're not in the Granite State, which produced the nation's first all-female congressional delegation in 2013. In New Hampshire, Scala said, a husband surrogate has to understand the prominent role that college-educated women play in politics, then strike a balance between speaking to both his wife’s achievements as an individual and her ability to function within a family.
"[Women] are really at the vanguard of the party, and their success, both at the elite level and at the level of voters, is essential to the party's success,” Scala said. “You come to New Hampshire as a husband who’s going to, in essence, vouch for your spouse on the campaign trail, [and] I think you have to do that in a particular way. You’re not going to necessarily talk about the candidate's skills as a homemaker. At least you’re not going to make a big deal of that.”
While on knocking doors alongside Molly Kelly, a former gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire, Mann stuck mostly to his wife's campaign policies, mixing in bits about her time as a single mom.
None of it, though was enough to sway Emma Sisti, a 33-year-old public defender, and the kind of undecided voter all the campaigns are seeking to attract. She chatted with Kelly and Mann for about 10 minutes and, in an interview afterwards, said while she “loves” to see a man helping his wife’s campaign, his pitch didn’t move her any closer towards choosing Warren in the primary.
"I mean I love that he's out there supporting her,” Sisti explained. “As a feminist, as a woman, I love that there are strong female politicians out there, and that their husbands are not looking for the spotlight, but are instead being supportive. But it doesn't really change where I am in terms of making a decision."
Sisti, who considered herself a progressive Democrat four years ago, said she's concerned about Warren's ability to execute all the plans she’s offered.
“Everything he’s talking about, everything Elizabeth stands for, I love,” she said. “It’s so hard because I really like Elizabeth a lot, and I really like her policies. I just feel, sometimes, that they’re too ambitious.”
She paused and noted it felt strange for her to make that last observation, before explaining, “If it’s too ambitious, I wonder if any of it can get done. And I don’t want to get nothing done when something could get done.”
At a event later in the day with volunteers in Laconia, Mann acknowledged that kind of the criticism, saying, “Yes, she has a lot of plans.” But he maintained they are all informed by his wife’s research and drive to help people.
