Ben Schreckinger is a reporter for Politico.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Seated at her desk, perched behind two bulging Rolodexes, a woman in an orange-pink scarf looks up and hollers out the door at her assistant.

“I have cones out front so he can park,” she says, then adds, under her breath, “He can’t park in my spot. I don’t care who he is.”


He is Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin and an early front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and he is on his way for lunch.

The owner of the parking spot, and the buildings around it, is Renee Plummer, vice president of Two International Group and one of the people in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who makes things run.

Plummer and her husband, Danny, are members of a small club of Republican activists — about 100 in all — who hold the keys to the New Hampshire primary, and thus, perhaps, the White House. Their power derives not from their checkbooks but their address books — the people they know and influence — and their encyclopedic knowledge of the local political terrain. To tap this power for their own advantage, the members of the largest and most competitive primary field in recent memory are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign of flattery — handwritten notes, personal visits, elaborate meals, emotional phone calls, drives through the countryside and sometimes even sleepovers.

Winning Renee Plummer’s endorsement means coming to a bland conference room in an office park near the Portsmouth International Airport and over a lunch of sandwiches fielding questions from business owners, military veterans and anyone else from Plummer’s sprawling regional network who feels like dropping by. Rick Perry’s been here. So has Rand Paul. So has Lindsey Graham.

On this Friday morning in mid-March, Plummer, 62, is fussing with her assistant about which women they can seat next to Walker. Why prioritize women? “Because I can,” she says, smiling. “Because this is my show, and I can.”

She bids farewell to her husband, on his way to a meeting, and shares her candidate criteria.

“I want to see how he conducts himself,” she says. “I want to feel him, you know? I want to see how presidential he can be, you know? See how quick he answers questions.”

On the issues, she has one preoccupation right now. “It’s really going to be ISIS,” she says, referring to the group also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “You tell me how you’re going to protect me and my family.”

By noon, the guests — friends and tenants of the Plummers — are streaming in. Former Sen. John E. Sununu is among them. Andy Leach, a former Sununu staffer, has recently signed on to Walker’s New Hampshire campaign. Is the presence of Leach’s old boss a sign that the Sununus, the state’s Republican dynasty, favor Walker?

“I’m here for Renee,” Sununu insists.

***

Some people, like Sununu, are born into the club of New Hampshire’s top-tier activists. Others, the many former officeholders who fill out its ranks, are elected. Plummer, on the other hand, got in simply by being Plummer.

Renee Salerno grew up in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. Her family, Sicilians, had moved there from the Bronx. (She still returns from visits to New York with hunks of imported cheese and cured meats.) As a teenager, she worked at a McDonald’s, but some friends made fun of the uniform and she quit. Later, she took work that better suited her style at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, where she learned event planning.

Event coordinator Renee Plummer, right, looks on as Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin talks with business leaders during a luncheon in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 13, 2015. | Cheryl Senter for Politico

She moved to New Hampshire in 1982 with her first husband, a doctor, and their young daughter. The next year, she gave birth to another daughter, Jennifer, who died within days. As she emerged from mourning, Plummer felt compelled to act. She determined to throw a winter “Snow Ball” as a fundraiser for the parents of infants in the neonatal unit at Exeter Hospital. Plummer and her ball made quite the splash with the good people of New Hampshire’s Seacoast. “I don’t think anyone had seen a gown like I had because it was so ….” She trails off, searching for the right word to describe the strapless gold-and-black getup, “New York.”

The newcomer had trampled on the turf of the New England matrons who ran the hospital’s annual fashion show fundraiser. “I frankly did not care,” she says. The ball was a success, and within a few years, she was chairing the fashion show, too.

She got together with her second husband, native son and developer Danny Plummer, in 1998, and the pair embarked on an ambitious development of 850,000 square feet of commercial space on 75 acres of the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth. As tenants lined up — over 200 businesses in all — Plummer threw herself into local institutions and causes, particularly on behalf of veterans. “You would risk your life to protect me, and you don’t know who I am?” she says. “I love you.”

Plummer insists she’s not particularly political, but she is a Republican, and she took to the local pastime, supporting the primary bids of Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 and John McCain in 2008, the same year she and Danny tied the knot.

Along the way, as their network and the reputation of their parties grew, the couple became members of the unofficial club of the state’s top-tier activists, gatekeepers to the nomination.

This election cycle, Plummer’s conference is already a well-worn campaign stop, but she has performed her gatekeeping role on the road as well. Last year, Rick Perry brought Plummer and her husband to Austin for dinner at the governor’s mansion. “He’s just a kick,” Plummer says of Perry. “Extremely charming,” adds John Lyons — a tenant of Plummer’s and a veteran of McCain’s and Tim Pawlenty’s New Hampshire efforts — who attended the same dinner, fielded a phone call from Bush in January, and has heard from another five candidates. Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina are on Plummer’s luncheon calendar. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and even Donald Trump have been invited.

But today the guest of honor is Walker, who arrives in a navy sweater. (“I told him to wear that,” Plummer confides later. The next day, the sweater will make headlines when Walker tells a crowd in Concord he bought it at Kohl’s for a dollar.) Fashion choices can be tricky, though. Another Sea Coast activist who is being courted by six campaigns, and spoke on condition of anonymity, bemoans the recent trend of dressing down for campaign stops in New Hampshire. “If you’re up north, that’s fine,” she says. “But if you’re coming to Portsmouth, and you’re meeting with all business people and you show up in your plaid sweater, that really annoys me.” The activist can afford to be picky. In recent weeks, she’s received handwritten notes from Christie, Rubio, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Fiorina, whose name she pronounces “Fiorino.”

At the lunch, Walker scores points when his opening remarks address ISIS. “I want a commander in chief who will look us in the eyes and say, ‘I will do whatever it takes to protect you and your family and your loved ones,’” he says. Plummer applauds.

After the Q&A, Plummer sidles up to Walker to wrap things up. As she looks out at the room, he locks his gaze on her.

(For the record, Walker’s laser-beam gaze apparently works. The Wisconsin governor ate breakfast with former state party vice chairman Cliff Hurst in Manchester that morning and sealed the first big activist endorsement of the primary, which Hurst issued a few days later. “We had total eye contact the whole time, which always impresses me,” explains Hurst.)

Outside in the parking lot, Plummer bids Walker farewell. An hour after meeting, they are now on hugging terms.

“Next time come to our condo,” she offers, but then catches herself. “It depends what we think — nothing yet.”

***

New Hampshire is small, so grass-roots politics remains more effective than expensive ad buys. The state parties exercise less control over the primary here than in other states, which means activists have the latitude to fuel insurgent candidacies. And the New Hampshire electorate — with its competing strains of liberalism, conservatism and libertarianism — is unpredictable.

All of this makes those lists of endorsements from concerned citizens in ads in the local papers critical indicators of the state of the presidential race. “I read every one of those newspaper columns, and I think everyone else does too,” says Tom Rath, former New Hampshire attorney general and adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. “When some of the dominoes start to fall, then you say ‘Look at this guy. He’s really getting some traction.’”

Presidential campaigns know this and plan accordingly. “When you’re in New Hampshire, your only priority is wooing activists and talking to voters,” says Sarah Stewart Crawford, manager of Jon Huntsman’s 2012 New Hampshire campaign.

That wooing is a vital, if elusive, political skill. “It’s a very elegant dance,” says Rath, who has become expert in this particular courtship over a half-century in Granite State politics. “There are no rules.”

There are, however, some tried-and-true techniques.

You can call the activists for advice, says Rath. “The great ploy of these candidates in these phone calls is to say, ‘What do you think I should do?’ Because it’s very flattering.”

Inviting them for a ride in your black SUV between campaign stops is a good way to squeeze in some face time — but not too much. “I wouldn’t put someone in the car for more than a 15-minute ride, because it gets pretty awkward,” Rath advises.

Political event coordinator Renee Plummer, center, with her husband Dan, right, in the elevator with Republican former New York Gov George Pataki, left, as they head to a luncheon event with local business leaders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 16, 2015. | Cheryl Senter for Politico

If more face time is needed, candidates can invite themselves for a sleepover. Dick Gephardt, the former Missouri congressman, was a master of making an evening appearance in some corner of Iowa or New Hampshire and then staying the night with a local activist, angling to win their support over breakfast, according to Joe Trippi, Gephardt’s former political director. It all leads to a surprising level of intimacy. “You have a baby, and it’s not the grandparents calling,” says Trippi. “It’s Jeb Bush.”

There’s a plaque outside the bedroom in Arnie Arnesen’s Concord home where Jimmy Carter spent the night with the house’s previous occupants, who had also been political activists. Arnesen — a liberal radio host and former officeholder — continues to host meet-and-greets at the house, most recently for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s introducing local activists to his own brand of charm as he explores running for the Democratic nomination.

“Someone emailed me after the event and said, ‘You know, I really like him, but does he know how to smile?’” recounts Arnesen, who has known Sanders since the ’80s. “Smiling’s hard for him,” she explains. “He’s too pissed off.”

Democratic activists in Iowa and New Hampshire report receiving handwritten notes from Hillary Clinton, but she hasn’t graced either state with her presence this year, contributing to the oft-voiced complaint that Democrats are starved for attention while their Republican counterparts wallow in it.

Former Gov. Martin O’Malley has been slightly more eager to please, as Arnesen discovered on a recent Tuesday morning when she decided on a whim she’d like to have O’Malley on her show that afternoon. “He said, ‘I might have other things to do.’ And I said, ‘I suggest you go on the air instead.’” O’Malley took her advice and called in.

“At least on the first date, it was impressive, and I was not prepared to be impressed,” says Arnesen, who has not met O’Malley in person. She says she’s now doing due diligence on the former governor by inviting Maryland journalists onto her show to hash out his record. “I do my homework. I’m not easily seduced. It’s too important.”

Jay Surdukowski — a plugged-in Concord lawyer who grabbed national attention with a recent op-ed in Granite State papers titled, “This Democrat is Not Ready for Hillary” — has also been subject to O’Malley’s advances, with a phone call, a handwritten note and an invitation to the former governor’s recent Ideas Summit in Baltimore (which he regretfully declined). Surdukowski reports “radio silence” from Clinton since he attended a meet-and-greet with her at a Dover restaurant in November, but he says her staff is promising a robust Clinton presence in New Hampshire and plenty of effort to court the generation of activists that’s come of age since her husband’s 1992 primary effort.

The activists take their time deciding , a habit that spawned the joke about the New Hampshire voter, in which he’s asked if he’ll be supporting candidate so-and-so, and he responds, “I don’t know. I’ve only seen him six times.”

Eventually, though, the candidate will have to seal the deal. “Some of them are brusque,” explains Rath. “‘Joe, We’re running a great race here. We really want you to be a part of it. Will you sign up?’” Others can’t bring themselves to ask. “They talk about the Red Sox. They talk about the weather,” says Rath, adding that Romney’s business background made him a master of the close.

Competent staff will never set up a candidate for rejection. “It’s like asking a girl to the dance,” says Rath. “Four of her friends have to tell you she’ll say yes before you ask her.”

For Renee Plummer, all of this delicate protocol can be chucked out with a little straight talk. That’s what happened with Huntsman in 2011. Plummer had seen the former Utah governor kick off his New Hampshire campaign in June in Exeter.

“I realized that he needed some help,” she says. “I saw someone had written his name on a sign J-O-H-N.”

But it wasn’t until September, after multiple requests from Huntsman’s campaign, that the Plummers agreed to sit down with him for lunch at Jumpin’ Jay’s Fish Cafe.

A memo prepared by Huntsman’s campaign ahead of lunch reminded the former governor that he was already in Plummer’s debt. “You most recently saw both Dan and Renee at the Pease Air Show Gala on August 12 of which Renee was the organizer and was instrumental in you being able to attend.”

Plummer’s preparation for the meeting was more cursory. “I thought, ‘What’s he going to be like?’ And then I thought, ‘I don’t give a sh—. I’m just going to start asking him questions,’” she says. “And he just looked us in the eye and answered.”

The forthrightness impressed the couple, who agreed as soon as Huntsman left the table to go to the men’s room that he was their man. “That luncheon,” she says with a snap of her fingers, “did it.”

In October, the Huntsman campaign put out a news release announcing the creation of New Hampshire Job Creators for Huntsman, with Plummer as co-chair and the first person quoted. In December, Huntsman unveiled his New Hampshire leadership team, with the Plummers as co-chairs. The couple made introductions, hosted events and relentlessly talked up their guy.

“He was last in the polls,” says Plummer. “And we brought him up to third.”

***

With Gov. Walker’s entourage on to its next stop, Plummer plops back behind her desk and kicks off her leather high heels. It’s time to start spreading her impressions across her network — “the people who talk to people who talk to people,” as she puts it — starting with her husband.

“He’s just sort of a natural,” she tells Danny, who returned from a business meeting downtown just in time to shake hands with Walker in the parking lot. “He did really well talking about ISIS, a little bit of that.”

She explains that Walker’s a social conservative, which riles her husband, whose chief concerns are fiscal. “If he goes to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., I don’t want the first thing he says to be, ‘Let’s overturn abortion.’”

That night, Jeb Bush is holding a meet-and-greet at the home of Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the state party and another top-tier activist, 20 minutes away in Dover. It never hurts to connect with an activist’s mom, and, though the pack of baying reporters in the kitchen spoils the intimacy, Bush stops to pose for a photo with Cullen’s diminutive 75-year-old mother, Mary, when he arrives. He lingers with her after his remarks have wrapped up, and she walks away impressed with Bush’s stance on education. ( “The educational system in America is a piss,” says the white-haired immigrant from Ireland.)

Plummer is not attending. She’s confident Bush will come to her. Instead, she’s having dinner with Marilinda Garcia, the Republican candidate for Congress last year in New Hampshire’s 2nd District. Not long ago, Garcia, in her early 30s, was just another politician Plummer was avoiding a sit-down with. But then they met and had a Huntsman moment.

“I fell in love with you,” gushes Plummer.

“I fell in love with you!” Garcia gushes back.

Garcia stays the night at the Plummers’ condo, and in the morning, with Danny at the office, the two women hang out in the living room, talking about Justin Bieber, Marky Ramone (just plain “Mark” to Plummer, an old friend of the punk rock drummer) and the various local causes vying for Plummer’s help.

Garcia is a sought-after activist in her own right, and she’s heard from several candidates — next weekend, she’ll speak at a women’s leadership conference in Washington at the invitation of Fiorina, a long-shot presidential contender. Walker isn’t one of them, but she says Plummer already filled her in on Friday’s luncheon. What were the takeaways? “That people think he’s Reagan-esque,” Garcia reports. “And that he shouldn’t have worn a blue shirt with a blue sweater.”

Over the course of the weekend, the social and political kibitzing continues. Plummer runs into a friend with ties to Vice President Joe Biden and tells her to invite him up for a luncheon. The friend introduces her to Stephen Erickson, a stern, reform-minded conservative who’s just written Plummer a letter asking her to join the steering committee for his Clean Government Alliance. She’ll think about it.

On Sunday, with Danny at home watching NASCAR, it’s off to the symphony. Plummer gets only a couple blocks before she runs into a young friend of her late son — lost in 2007 to a drug overdose — who tears into her for a recent Facebook post praising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She takes it in stride.

“I’m just happy that you’re interested,” she says and kisses him on the cheek (along with ISIS, youth civic engagement is among her top priorities).

Then she pulls on the front of his shirt. “So you’re working out.”

Inside the Music Hall she sees George Carlisle, a burly political independent in a fedora. He says he’s eagerly awaiting the Plummers’ endorsement, even though he hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with them in past elections.

“I have a feeling on this next [one] we’re going to get together.”

***

On Monday morning, Plummer’s back in the bland conference room, going through the same paces, this time in preparation for George Pataki. A presidential bid by the former New York governor would be a moonshot, but Plummer considers him a friend, and she has a thing for underdogs.

After a GPS snafu, Pataki shows up late and hugs Plummer. There are a couple of dozen people here to see him, half the showing for Walker. What he lacks in attendees and general public awareness that he’s (maybe) running, he makes up for in rapport with Plummer, whom he’s met several times.

“We don’t have enough candidates running,” he tells her on his way in. “You should run. You’d do well in New Hampshire.”

“Some of these people don’t know who you are,” his hostess informs him. “We want them to see you in your splendor.”

Upstairs, Pataki explains his presence. “When Renee says you should go somewhere, you should go.”

He speaks briefly, then Plummer asks about ISIS. “I want to know what you would do to protect me, my daughter, my husband.” Pataki mentions a couple times that he was governor on 9/11. Plummer — who keeps a framed front page from that day on her office wall — appears satisfied.

She asks what his first three calls to foreign leaders would be if he were elected president. Pataki starts to answer when Doug Bates, president of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, breaks in.

“Governor, I would just recommend that if you are elected, you should call Renee.”

“You’ll be the first call,” Pataki tells her.

After the event, Pataki comes down to the office to change out of his suit into more casual attire. Plummer shows him a map of Sudan and tells him about the plight of the Christians there. Pataki nods and murmurs something about how he looks forward to discussing it further.

After he departs, Plummer and her husband get together to grade his performance.

“He could be better,” says Plummer. At one point, in the course of criticizing Common Core, Pataki had said that he couldn’t understand kindergarten math homework shown to him by his secretary.

“I don’t know,” says Danny. “He’s Pataki. What you see is what you get.”

The Plummers have a lot more seeing to do before they commit. Sometime in early summer, as wedding season kicks off, they expect to make a public declaration of devotion. The campaign will issue a news release. Other members of the club will take notice. Later, the campaign will announce its New Hampshire leadership team. Local papers and even national press will write it up. Plummer will fight for her guy down to the wire.

“She a happy warrior,” says Rath. “But she’s a warrior.”

In the meantime, Plummer’s friend and fellow activist Ellen Christo (leaning toward Chris Christie) has a word of advice for Plummer’s suitors.

“Be persistent,” she says. “Everyone’s trying to get her attention.”