Some might wonder why Democratic Congressional candidate Peter Welch's campaign has scheduled him in for some campaign time Friday morning in Buel's Gore, a pie-shaped wedge of remote countryside tucked in between Starksboro and Fayston.
After all, the place has a population of 8 and is so obscure it's never been organized into an official town.
Still, that's where Welch and his trusty canine companion, Pepper, will be on Friday, although spotting a voter there may be tougher than spotting deer and who knows if any of them -- the people, that is, not the deer -- might be pro-Welch or even likely voters.
Why is he doing this? Well, it turns out that when Welch sets foot in Buel's Gore, he will have offiically visited every one of the state's 251 "communities." He spent part of Thursday dropping by Roxbury and Braintree, plus will hit Huntington Friday morning on his way to the 251 finish line in Buel's Gore.
Welch, at a press conference earlier this week, was chortling about his visits to various zero population meccas like Lewis and Ferdinand last weekend. "It was great campaigning out there in the woods. I know Pepper liked it," he said.
Carolyn Dwyer, Welch's campaign manager, said the idea of going to all 251 communities was a staff decision. She said occasionally a staffer riding with Welch would get lost and Team Welch would find itself in Massachusetts or Canada, and that in some of the more obscure ones, finding voters was particularly tough. He really did manage to meet voters in every single one of the 251 communities, Dwyer reported.
BTW, if you can't make it to Buel's Gore on Friday, you can take a virtual ride with the candidate via a slide show of Welch's wanderings that is slated to go up on his Web site the same day.
-- Sam Hemingway
