Empty Town Halls and ‘Easter Bunny Epiphanies’: On the Campaign Trail With Gary Johnson

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http://swampland.time.com/2011/10/10/empty-town-halls-and-easter-bunny-epiphanies-on-the-campaign-trail-with-gary-johnson/

By Alex Altman | @aaltman82 | October 10, 2011 |

New Hampshire

When Gary Johnson was in third grade, a teacher casually mentioned that Santa Claus didn’t exist. This was news. “I’m like, what?” he recalls. “That means there’s no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy. They don’t exist!?”

The former two-term governor of New Mexico and Republican presidential candidate relates this story—the moment when reality punctured his childhood cocoon—as a metaphor for the painful political awakening he’s endured on the campaign trail in 2012. “I’ve come to a lot of what I call ‘Easter Bunny epiphanies’ in my life,” Johnson says. The realization that presidential politics is not, in fact, a paragon of democracy has caught him by surprise. “Naively, I really thought that when it comes to politics, this would be a fair process.”

It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and we’re sitting at a plastic table in the Manchester, N.H., basement office that serves as a headquarters for Johnson’s quixotic presidential bid. The suite is a reflection of the over-sized ambition and modest scope of the campaign itself: spacious and sparse, with detritus scattered in the kitchen, signs strewn around the room and a hand-lettered “Johnson 2012” placard papered on one wall. Johnson, 58, is wearing jeans and sneakers, a Livestrong bracelet and a shirt that wicks sweat away from his chiseled frame. Later today, along with his fiancé, Kate Prusack, and his adult son Erik, he’ll embark on his latest campaign swing through New Hampshire, a six-day, 458-mile bike tour dubbed the “Ride for Freedom.” He’s invited fans to ride along between stops, but given the way the campaign is going, he’s apprehensive about turnout. “Maybe no one will show up,” he says.