She was the lone protester at President Joe Biden’s campaign stop in Concord Tuesday, a sincere woman who simply wanted to be seen.
Instead, the Secret Service shunted her off to the “designated First Amendment Zone” while Biden addressed a small, handpicked crowd of party loyalists at the New Hampshire Technology Institute (NHTI).
Betsy Kelly of Gilford is an opponent of American military support for Israel as it wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In her blue jeans and Birkenstocks, Kelly hardly cuts a menacing figure. Her sign simply read, “Stop Arming Israel.”
The “Designated First Amendment Zone”
But Secret Service agents ordered Kelly to put her sign down, walk westward along the perimeter of the community college campus, and stand at what they called the “designated First Amendment Zone.” Which is where NHJournal found her, at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center standing in the shadow of the center’s replica of the Mercury-Redstone rocket — the 1960s-era launch vehicle that served as America’s first crewed space booster.
One small step for man, one pretty good hike for a presidential protester.
Kelly said she showed up at NHTI about an hour before the event and walked inside the venue without a problem. “I didn’t bring my sign in. I just wanted to see inside,” she recalled.
Unimpressed, Kelly walked back outside and later spotted socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) exiting a car. Sanders was one of the speakers at the event touting the Biden administration’s policies designed to lower prescription drug prices.
Kelly said when she tried to re-enter the venue, officials asked to see her ticket.
“I told them I had already gone inside,” Kelly said, adding that she didn’t know she needed a special ticket to see the president speak at a local community college. “They seemed surprised when I told them that.
“They told me in no uncertain terms that I had to leave.”
As Kelly and an NHJournal reporter walked back toward her car along the perimeter set up by the Secret Service, an agent approached and asked what she was “doing here.”
“If you could just go stand by your car,” the agent began, prompting Kelly to ask, “But what about my First Amendment rights?”
“Did you go to the planetarium?” the agent replied.
“Yes, and that’s where they [planetarium staff] told me to leave,” Kelly responded before reluctantly shuffling back to her car.
Upon returning to the planetarium parking area, the NHJournal reporter began taking photos of the designated “First Amendment Zone.” He was interrupted by concerned planetarium staff.
“Are you taking pictures?” a planetarium manager asked. The reporter said yes and cited the Secret Service’s designation of the planetarium’s entrance as the “First Amendment Zone.”
“What does ‘First Amendment Zone’ mean?” asked the manager, apparently unaware of the government’s designation.
After being reminded of Kelly’s earlier appearance and subsequent request that she kindly take her sign with her and leave the planetarium area, the manager smiled.
“Ah, got it,” she said and walked back inside the planetarium.
The parking lot outside the venue as President Joe Biden delivered a speech in Concord, NH, on October 22, 2024.
Kelly’s car, parked in the NHTI venue’s main lot, was surrounded by a sea of empty spaces.
“Nobody is here,” she said as she walked from the McAuliffe planetarium back towards the NHTI parking lots. “I’m absolutely shocked, this place is empty.”
She’s not the only one.
Sitting presidents don’t often come to a small state like New Hampshire. When they do, it’s usually a major event, with plenty of fans trying to get a glimpse of the Leader of the Free World and long lines of foes who want to give him a piece of their mind.
This is Biden’s third New Hampshire visit since the First in the Nation primary in January, a primary he kicked off the Democratic Party’s calendar and tried to kill. In those three visits, he’s taken no press questions, spoken only to small, carefully selected crowds, and generated little interest from the public.
The big headline from Tuesday, for example, was his “We gotta lock him up” quip about Donald Trump at state Democratic Party headquarters. While it made headlines in the conservative press, it was largely ignored by the mainstream media. Why?
“For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach,” a current Biden administration official told Axios.
Veteran New Hampshire GOP strategist Michael Dennehy agrees.
“He had no crowds at his events, he had absolutely no energetic interest from the public or from the New Hampshire Democrats running for office,” Dennehy noted. “He didn’t even elicit a protest on the ground at his event — which every President over the last several decades has endured at their public appearances.
“The bottom line: no one cares about Joe Biden anymore. That is truly a sad state of affairs.”
