Chrissie Thompson

cthompson@usatoday.com

BOW, N.H. – Suddenly, John Kasich’s campaign has people in New Hampshire believing.

“What are you going to do after you either win New Hampshire or come wicked close?” asked a New Hampshire business owner, in typical New England fashion.

The business owner, like many people leaning toward the Ohio governor, had wanted to vote for one of the governors in the Feb. 9 primary – the nation’s first.

“Unfortunately, besides you, in the state of New Hampshire, no other (governors) are really being up in the polls,” he told Kasich at a town hall meeting Tuesday night in Contoocook, New Hampshire. Still, he worried about Kasich’s longevity through the rest of 2016’s primaries.

One of his clients, he said, is an Ohioan who likes Kasich, but was considering voting for Donald Trump in Ohio’s March 15 primary. “By the time I get a chance to vote for (Kasich), he won’t be around,” the Ohio client said. “We never hear anything about Kasich.”

What’s clear: Despite a lack of national momentum, and attention in debates or national coverage, Kasich has started performing better in New Hampshire, where he has staked the hopes of his presidential campaign. After he languished in the polls for much of the fall, several recent surveys have shown him in second place in the Granite State, behind billionaire Donald Trump.

What’s unclear: How much better he’s doing and how long his new momentum will last. A couple polls have shown him further back in the pack. At the least, Kasich has pulled even with establishment GOP candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In either scenario, he has a shot at finishing second and emerging as an alternative to Trump.

Which is probably why Kasich’s New Hampshire town hall meetings got attention this week from nearly every political journalism outlet in the country. Twelve cameras, plus CNN’s Dana Bash and Fox News’ Bret Baier, packed into a retirement community auditorium for one event. A documentary crew from Showtime’s “The Circus” trailed him for parts of three days.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the hilarious puppet often featured on Conan O’Brien’s late night shows, asked Kasich a question in a gaggle of reporters and made jokes about the national debt counter Kasich displays at his town hall meetings. (The national debt figure, Triumph suggested, is also the number of personalities Democrat Hillary Clinton has tried on this this campaign.)

At least this week, the Granite Stater’s client might hear about Kasich.

One voter's choice: Sanders or Kasich

It’s unclear why New Hampshire voters newly are considering Kasich. Maybe it’s just that they’re starting to make up their minds. New Hampshire voters famously wait until the last minute to pick a candidate, and a few of Kasich’s supporters intimated they could change their mind on their way to the polls.

“It changes all the time, but right now he seems the most level-headed,” said Joan Lachut, an 83-year-old from Hillsboro who came to a nearby sporting goods store to meet Kasich.

Carroll Goodell, a 54-year-old auto technician from Lebanon, hasn’t even decided which primary to vote in. New Hampshire voters can register as “undeclared” and then vote in either party’s primary. (They can even register at the door on Feb. 9, before walking in to cast their vote.)

Goodell’s short list? Democrat Bernie Sanders and Kasich.

“He knows what hard times are,” Goodell said of Kasich, citing the death of the Ohio governor’s parents in a collision with a drunken driver.

John Kasich counting on undecided voters

Kasich, for his part, hasn’t changed much to prompt his polling improvement.

He’s still holding town-hall meeting after town-hall meeting – about 60 since this summer, with another 40 or so on tap for the next three weeks. He still answers questions with his signature style -- sometimes with corny jokes, sometimes while dropping names, sometimes by interrupting or flatly disagreeing with the questioner. He still insists he knows how to fix the nation's problems and can persuade Republicans and Democrats to work together.

But since the polling bump, attitudes around his campaign have changed for the better.

“Right before Christmas, it was hard,” admitted Tom Rath, a longtime New Hampshire pol who advises the Kasich campaign. Attendance at events dwindled.

“I had one day when I was a little frustrated,” Kasich said in an interview aboard his New Hampshire campaign bus. “I vent.”

Kasich says he largely missed the coverage of his slide and his subsequent resurgence.

“I have not had a television turned on in my hotel room – I don’t remember the last time,” he said. “I’ve worked as hard as I can, I’ve put in the sweat equity, and the results have been in the hands of the Lord.”

Kasich: 'Prince of light' or 'Satan?'

In late December, a huge snowstorm hit New Hampshire. Bush canceled his campaign schedule, citing the weather. Kasich pressed on.

“He was determined to make every one” of his events, Rath said. And people braved snow to hear him. “That trip, I think, pumped him up.”

In the first week of 2016, something changed. Kasich packed in twice as many people as expected at campaign events.

Even Brooks Alderman, a 21-year-old intern for the campaign, said he could tell a change was coming. A couple weeks ago, he said, when he cold-called New Hampshire voters, they started saying more often they were considering Kasich.

It’s not that Kasich supporters had been discouraged, said former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, Kasich’s first major New Hampshire supporter. “It’s being uncertain. You don’t have the empirical evidence that what you’re doing is moving numbers,” Sununu said. Now, with the boost in polling, “it’s a reinforcement that … what we’ve done has made a difference.”

'Bill Clinton' campaigns for Kasich?

Kasich’s rise has attracted attacks from rivals.

Bush’s political action committee has reportedly mailed literature attacking Kasich’s support of Medicaid expansion under Obamacare and his congressional vote in favor of the assault weapons ban, which he now says was ineffective.

A man wearing a mask of former Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Kasich campaign sticker on his jacket visited at least three of Kasich’s appearances this week, standing outside with a poster bearing a larger-than-life copy of a thank you note Clinton sent Kasich for his assault weapons vote. He wouldn’t identify himself – he kept insisting his name was Bill Clinton – but said his effort wasn’t paid for by any PAC.

Bush supporter John O’Brien, of Concord, braved 16-degree weather to stand outside a Kasich event Monday night in Lebanon, passing out fliers he said he paid for himself. “John Kasich Is NOT A Fiscal Conservative,” they read, citing Kasich’s support of raising taxes on sales, fracking or business revenue to pay for cuts in the state income tax.

But Kasich has his own volunteers braving the cold. Tuesday afternoon, seven staffers and 10 phone-calling volunteers, plus two former congressmen and a former Ohio state representative, crammed into a rented home-turned-office and sometimes dormitory: Kasich’s New Hampshire headquarters in Manchester.

A crew of three drove out into the dusk to knock on doors. One woman told volunteer Pasha Majdi, of Vienna, Virginia, that her sister supported Kasich. Great, he said. Did she want to know more about him?

“I can probably do some research,” she said, “but my child is crying.”

Back in Contoocook, Kasich was taking question after question. If he emerges from New Hampshire as a frontrunner for the GOP nomination, he wants to keep the same strategy.

“This town hall format is like the greatest thing I’ve ever (done),” he said. “If I go forward, we’re going to do town halls, in every state.”