Gift Horse Index 2: The niceness of every 2016 candidates New Hampshire campaign HQ RANKED!

SPOILER ALERT: Ben Carson’s staff are still the nicest people on Earth.

Last week, two of the folks behind the new card game The Contender traveled to Des Moines, Iowa ahead of their caucuses. They gave a free copy of the game to every candidate’s Iowa HQ and wrote about how the campaigns reacted to the gift. Read about that here.

This weekend, they did the same thing in New Hampshire. Here are the results, with annotations as to which campaigns were nicer or not so nice relative to their Hawkeye State counterparts…

NOTES: We went to Manchester, where all of the competitive campaigns had their NH headquarters. Before we begin, we have to make note of some departures. Pour one out for Rand Paul (Iowa’s #3), Mike Huckabee (#5), Martin O’Malley (#6), and Rick Santorum (#10).

#1 Ben Carson (#1 in Iowa)

Once again, the Carson campaign steals the show. Volunteers were mixing about everywhere, so we asked a random woman if they were in charge. The answer was no, but she invited into the back room and given coffee and doughnuts. When we asked if we could take a picture, the response was ‘of course’. While we were shooting, the actual person who was in charge came over and greeted us. Someone had told him what we were about.

#2 Bernie Sanders (#2 in Iowa)

Holding on to his second place spot, the Bernie camp was a treat we saved for the end. The building wasn’t as open as their Iowa location, but we found a good place to give our spiel. The volunteers were popping out of the wings to hear about the Contender.

#3 John Kasich (N/A)

In Iowa, Kasich did not have an official HQ, so in The Granite State we walked in with no expectations. To our surprise the place was popping. The man himself was on his way and spirits were high. They allowed us a full run of the place and offered us sandwiches. He barely misses out on the top two since we were ignored pretty much immediately after introductions.

#4 Hillary Clinton (Tied for #10 in Iowa)

What a difference a narrow win in Iowa makes. The biggest upset in this report was Hillary. After a last place finish in our Des Moines gift horse index, the volunteers we spoke to in New Hampshire were welcoming. Granted, we arrived early when there was one person there, and then piggybacked off that friendly interaction as everyone else came in. Still counts!

#5 Marco Rubio (#9 in Iowa)

Rubio marks the start of the polite but formal reception. Rubio gets the leg up because his campaign said they’d put the game in their event kit. We don’t know what an event kit is, but it sounds important. Thanks gang.

#6 Chris Christie / Donald Trump (Tied for #8 in Iowa)

The only pair that tied in Iowa, also the only pair that ties in New Hampshire. Both folks we talked to were distracted by the primary spirit. There was a ‘You might as well’ attitude towards us taking a picture.

#7 Jeb Bush* (#7 in Iowa)

Marco got the asterix in Iowa, Jeb gets it here. They welcomed us, but there was no one there that could make a decision about letting us take a photo. After waiting 10 minutes, they said that no one knew the photo policy. So no. It’s a shame, they missed out on the next big Jeb! gif. In fact, let’s just post that gif again… just to show them what they missed out on.

Yup. That’s some quality gif action.

#8 Ted Cruz (#4 in Iowa)

The most notable difference award goes to Ted Cruz. His Des Moines office was a model of organization and efficiency. New Hampshire felt like somewhere Jack Bauer would have to punch is way out of. For starters, there were no lights on. The person in charge prowled around the room looking to jump on anything that seemed out of place. USA Today was shadowing one of their canvassers. He mentioned the script he uses while knocking on doors. The organizer snapped in “You can’t write about that, that script is privileged information. Anything you just saw is off the record.”

Hopefully the game brings a little joy to their sun starved volunteers.

That’s about it for our second Gift Horse Index. Not sure if we’ll get a chance to do another one, but YOU can have a chance to buy our game at TheContender.us.