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There was of course vast skepticism and discouragement in the early days. Says one McGovern worker: "If you were a 'realist' then, you decided that McGovern didn't have a chance; you went to work for Muskie." New Hampshire was crucial. From Yale and Harvard, from New York and Vermont, the young trekked to the state to ring doorbells and organize—500 of them each weekend for six weeks, 2,000 for the weekend before the March 7 primary. "Without question," says Edward O'Donnell, McGovern's national youth director, "it was those seven weekends that turned the campaign around. We really had to pull teeth to get those kids up there." But enough of them came to enable McGovern's volunteers to canvass 200,000 in the state.
McGovern lost New Hampshire to Muskie—37.6% to 47.8%—but because he came so much closer than expected, his showing there may have been the key to all his later success. The volunteers started flowing in. Tim Boggs, 23, dropped out of the University of Wisconsin to work for $50 a week as McGovern's state youth coordinator; he registered 13,000 students at the university in Madison, and 10,000 of them voted for McGovern in the Wisconsin primary. Larry Diamond, 21, president of the Stanford student body, provided 200 volunteers for McGovern for Northern California and got 5,000 Stanford students to the polls.
"This campaign has a soul of its own," says McGovern Campaign Manager Gary Hart, 34. "The volunteers don't want it to become just another political campaign. There is a mystique about it." Some fascinatingly complex psychologies were involved. Said Patrick Johnston, 25, a probation officer and delegate from California's Calaveras County: "What this nomination and election represents is a test of whether the liberal and the young are willing to win. There are a lot of people involved in the campaign who have a sort of suicidal urge to lose. The reason is that in losing you can prove you're right, because in losing you never have to see your man compromise." A McGovern delegate from Georgia, Beatrice Smith, 32, disagreed. "People who see youth as monolithic are crazy," she said. "Number 1, they are pragmatic. They understand the need for compromise faster than some liberals." Observed Ed Rogoff, McGovern's 20-year-old New York campaign manager: "The people in the campaign this year are more proud of their professionalism than their morality."