The string of newspaper endorsements just continued to roll in for Senator John McCain, getting the nod on Sunday of the Nashua Telegraph, the 26th newspaper in the region to endorse his candidacy.

Normally, newspaper endorsements have only limited value, encouraging supporters and getting voters to perhaps give a candidate another look. But Mr. McCain’s sweep of the New Hampshire area newspapers is something altogether different.

Mitt Romney, leading in the most recent polls in the state, has scored zero endorsements.

In fact, only Rudolph W. Giuliani has won the endorsement of any other newspaper in the state, securing the nod of Foster’s Daily Democrat and the newspaper that serves the Laconia lakes region.

It was no accident.

While Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani aggressively courted editorial boards, none did it with the determination of Mr. McCain, who visited some papers two or three times.



Charlie Black, a McCain adviser, said that the campaign made the calculation that because of the compressed primary schedule, the holiday and the saturation television advertising they expected from Mr. Romney, editorial endorsements could prove a way to break through the clutter.

Of course, the most coveted was the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader, which has not only endorsed Mr. McCain, but has followed up with a series of blistering front-page editorials disparaging Mr. Romney.

“You can’t buy that kind of thing in a media message,” Mr. Black said.

He said that when he first started as a political consultant three decades ago, it was possible to buy ads on the major networks and reach some 95 percent of the voters.

Now, he said, you could spend a billion dollars buying television time and not have that kind of penetration.

For all the campaign’s efforts to secure endorsements, however, even Mr. McCain himself at times seems somewhat surprised that they all lined up so completely his way.

And at the same time, many of the editorials have echoed a central criticism of the way Mr. Romney has presented himself to voters here.

“At a time when some candidates present themselves to voters as something they haven’t always been, we find the Arizona senator to be the genuine article,” the Telegraph wrote in Sunday’s endorsement. “You might not always agree with his answers, but you won’t leave a conversation wondering where he stands.”