In New Hampshire, no one does town halls quite like Chris Christie

LOUDON, N.H. -- The art of the town hall is part of the lore and legend of New Hampshire's presidential politics. Everybody has to do them. New Hampshire voters demand it. In the contest for the Republican nomination, no one does them quite like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Marco Rubio does them. Ted Cruz does them. John Kasich, who needs New Hampshire as much as Christie, does them. Jeb Bush does them. Carly Fiorina does them. But not since Sen. John McCain of Arizona used town halls to upset then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the 2000 primary here, and then again to resurrect his candidacy in 2008, has a candidate tried to burrow into the Granite State in quite the way Christie is doing.

Tuesday marked Christie's 50th day in the state. In that time, the Republican has done three dozen town-hall meetings, often accompanied by his wife, Mary Pat. He claimed on Monday night he's been in the state more days than any other candidate and joked that his wife probably has recorded the second-most.

Town halls can be held almost anywhere -- VFW posts, schools auditoriums or gymnasiums, restaurants. Sometimes they are in living rooms, which on winter evenings in towns like Keene or Epping, with a light snow falling outside, create an atmosphere of intimacy between candidate and voters that is rare in politics today.

On Monday night, the venue for Christie's town hall was another classic of the genre, the firehouse, in this case the Loudon Fire Department. At one end was an antique fire truck, Engine 2, complete with wooden ladders. At the other end was a more modern fire truck. In between, several hundred people were seated in folding chairs, their cars spilling out of the available parking lot to line both sides of the highway.

It is that time in the campaign when all the crowds for all the candidates will begin to grow. Earlier in the day, at a VFW post in Laconia, a large audience showed up to hear Rubio, the senator from Florida -- and all waited patiently for the candidate, who was an hour late because of travel delays. No one seemed to mind.

Town halls usually begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. But in Loudon on Monday night, there was no American flag hanging inside the firehouse. So everyone turned to look up on the wall at a torn copy of a poster with the iconic photo of firefighters and first responders, with a flag, at Ground Zero. The poster included the words, "Never Forget September 11, 2001." It seemed a fitting tribute for the times.

Christie town halls are endurance tests. They are scheduled for two full hours and the candidate rarely stops before he's hit that mark. The sessions are both well choreographed and spontaneous. The candidate likes to speak in the round and, when possible, to roam the room with a hand-held microphone. A stool holds his bottles of water.

Christie is the undisputed center of attention, the star of the show. He now makes jokes about his encounters with constituents in New Jersey, like the time he told someone to sit down and shut up. In New Hampshire, hoping to soften the edges of his personality that critics say is bullying and intimidating, he's been careful to avoid such outbursts. But sometimes the humor can go awry.

At a town hall in the fall, Christie was trying to ingratiate himself with the audience by noting that he, as a New York Mets fan, and they, mostly Boston Red Sox fans, shared at least one thing in common: They all hated the New York Yankees.

Most people laughed. But one elderly man seated a few feet from where Christie was standing -- and apparently one of the few diehard Yankees fans in New England -- harrumphed, announced to the person next to him that he'd heard enough, and got up and left the room. The irrepressible Christie for once seemed shocked.

Christie begins, as do all candidates, with an opening statement. On Monday night, he focused on terrorism, on how the attacks in Paris have changed the nature of the campaign and especially what voters should be looking for in a nominee.

He said voters should not be looking for someone new or inexperienced, certainly not someone who sees the world from a subcommittee hearing room in the United States Senate. Without mentioning any of his rivals by name, he had raised what he wants voters to see as vulnerabilities of Sens. Rubio and Cruz, businessman Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky .

The heart of any good town hall is the question-and-answer period. Christie revels in the Q&A. He loves the banter and the give and take. Like McCain, he's willing to use barbed humor that might mildly offend some or even everyone in the audience in order to woo them all.

On Monday night, he joked about the size of the New Hampshire House, which has more than 400 members, more than any other state in the country. In New Hampshire, they're a dime a dozen, he suggested, more than enough for every candidate to claim the support of lots of elected officials.

To anyone in the state who suggests that they feel politically powerless in a world of big money and super PACs, Christie has a message: Stop whining. "Man, if New Hampshire feels voiceless, imagine how Montana feels," he said to laughter.

Noting the field numbers 14 candidates, Christie said that, on primary day, Feb. 9, "You -- all of you -- are going to send 9 to 10 of them home."

Some candidates keep their appearances to an hour, with limited time for questions. Christie's question-and-answer period runs on and on. It runs so long in part because the candidate hasn't learned to give short answers -- or believes that the longer the answers the better he looks to the voters.

Most candidates end the sessions with a last question and a short closer. But at Christie town halls, just as the audience assumes it's time to leave, he launches into a lengthy concluding statement, much of it about his family -- his gregarious Irish father and his outspoken Sicilian mother, who set the rules and ran the family.

He includes a well-practiced recitation of the emotional conversation with his mother as she lay dying and how she ordered him to go to work rather than spend the day at her hospital bed because, as she put it, "Christopher, there's nothing left unsaid between us." It's his way of explaining why he is blunt and outspoken with the voters.

On Monday, he closed with an additional note: a reminder that the period of introduction by the candidates is now over. Now, he said, it's game time.

He joked that voters here are well schooled to make candidates feel good by telling them they are on a list of their three contenders. "I don't want to be in your top three anymore," Christie said. "It's time to get to business. I want your vote on Feb. 9."

There will be many more town-hall meetings in New Hampshire between now and early February -- especially by the candidates, such as Christie, who see them as the path to victory or, at a minimum, political survival. They are part of the ritual of New Hampshire politics, an unpredictable rite of passage for the candidates -- and for the voters, wonderful live theater on any given night of the week.