CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani surrounded himself with state troopers Saturday – but they had nothing to do with the hostage standoff a day earlier at one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign offices.
The troopers clustered around Giuliani as part of his endorsement by the New Hampshire Troopers Association, not efforts to beef up security in the wake of Friday’s incident in which a distraught man took Clinton staffers hostage in Rochester before surrendering to police hours later.
Though Clinton’s campaign said it is taking additional unspecified security precautions, other campaigns and observers said it would be business as usual for the five weeks remaining until the Jan. 8 primary.
Candidates who already travel with security – either Secret Service or private protection – will continue to do so, and the field offices scattered around the state will remain open to all comers and staffed mostly by volunteers, campaigns including Giuliani’s said Saturday.
“We always advise our staff to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings, but the kind of one-on-one contact that voters and campaigns have in New Hampshire is part of what makes the primary great, and we will continue to meet with voters in their towns and neighborhoods across the state,” said Kate Bedingfield, spokeswoman for Democrat John Edwards.
Craig Stevens, spokesman for Republican Mitt Romney, said Romney remains committed to meeting voters one-on-one.
“He’s done it for the past 11 months and he’s going to keep on doing it right through January 8,” Stevens said.
Incidents such as Friday’s probably are inevitable given the “open door” nature of New Hampshire politics, but won’t change it, said Mike Dennehy, national political director for Sen. John McCain’s campaign.
“It will not have any significant effect on the New Hampshire primary, today and for the foreseeable future because, first of all, New Hampshire prides itself on the grass-roots nature of the New Hampshire primary and the openness of the New Hampshire primary. An incident like this is not going to stop people in New Hampshire from continuing that tradition,” Dennehy said.
McCain himself does not like security at his events, Dennehy said.
“He believes it’s an infringement on being able to connect directly with voters,” Dennehy said. “Other than having a very alert campaign staff looking out for these situations, that will be the extent of the security.”
That said, one security expert is confident that campaigns have, or soon will, respond to the incident with extra staff training.
“It’s not something they’re going to want to broadcast, obviously, but I guarantee you steps already have been taken by a number of the campaigns to protect their staff members and to educate them to mitigate the risks,” said Kevin Walker of security consultants Walker International in Manchester. “I think it’s going to come down to education, it’s going to come down to policy. Basically, more awareness for the staff.”
Beyond that, he said campaigns have to weigh the risk against the desire to keep their offices and events open to the public.
“You want to invite people in,” he said. “You have to really look at what’s going to be acceptable. What is the public going to tolerate?”
Asked in Iowa whether the incident will change his security plan, Democratic candidate Chris Dodd said his campaign will discuss it but will be careful not to allow him to become constrained.
“I know full well, having spent years in public life, that there’s always these possibilities of things occurring,” Dodd said. “Gratefully, nothing happened yesterday … but I’d be reluctant about all of a sudden having policies here in terms of offices and so forth made less accessible to the public.”
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Associated Press Writer Amy Lorentzen contributed to this story from Des Moines, Iowa.
AP-ES-12-01-07 1738EST
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