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Volunteers, not money, became the heartbeat of Shea-Porter's crusade. But instead of enlisting college students, the lifeforce of most political campaigns, Shea-Porter sought older volunteers. For one thing, she couldn't pay college students. For another, she wanted people who not only had time--retirees, middle-aged people with grown children--but also had strong ties to their communities, who felt passionately enough about the issues to work hard.

And work hard they did, those 600 volunteers. In North Conway, volunteers paid for their own newspaper advertisement. In Dover, "Carol People," as they called themselves, wrote personal notes on 55,000 postcards. In Belknap County, Lynn Rudmin Chong '67, a writing instructor at Plymouth State University, held signs, hosted Shea-Porter parties, sent hundreds of e-mails, and wrote dozens of letters to the editor of every newspaper in the district. On the coast, Cathy Cavallero, a Rye elementary school teacher, visited every home of every registered independent and Democratic voter in Seabrook, a blue collar town often overlooked by both parties. She then moved up the coast, soliciting votes in Hampton, North Hampton, and her hometown of Rye. She visited mobile home parks as well as cul de sacs of McMansions.

THANKS, MOM: Carol Shea-Porter '74, '79G hugs her mother, Peggy Shea, on election day in Portsmouth, N.H.

The volunteer frenzy left observers speechless. "There's never been anything really like it before," says Kevin Landrigan, senior political writer for The Telegraph of Nashua. What intrigued Landrigan was that because few thought she had a chance, Shea-Porter and her organization flew under the radar, receiving less scrutiny than other campaigns.

That, of course, helped. Shea-Porter could speak frankly, because few of her events were covered by the press. Only one of her handful of debates with Bradley was televised. She could woo trade unions by talking about the tough jobs she'd held while working her way through college, from scraping dishes at Stillings Dining Hall to sanding auto parts at Davidson Rubber to gluing heels at Dover shoe factories. She could talk to veterans about her father's service in the Navy and her husband's in the Army, about the need to take care of those returning from Iraq. She was refreshingly honest, says John Joyal, a welding instructor at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, who helped win her the endorsement of his union. "She looks you in the eye," he says. "And she doesn't dance around questions."

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