Seeing Beyond Gender, Despite Shared Struggles

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New Hampshire Resident Speaks Her Mind

Laurie Tostenson of Lebanon, N.H. speaks about who she'll be voting for in the upcoming primary and why that person isn't Hillary.

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"Don't believe that the hard work is over -- we still have a long way to go," Clinton said at a women's event last fall in Iowa.

Tostenson sounds a lot like Clinton when she talks about helping female housekeepers advance. She has developed programs to help them get ahead and has tried to convince them that they can operate the large, high-speed burnishers used to wax floors, just like the men, so they can make more money than they do pushing a mop.

"This is a chance to do more for yourself," Tostenson told one woman.

But they parted ways after the assassination of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, when she heard Clinton say, "I have known Benazir Bhutto for a dozen years. I knew her as a leader. I knew her as someone willing to take risks."

To Tostenson, that sounded like one of the most arrogant and opportunistic things she had ever heard. "I felt like she was sticking her nose up in the air saying 'I knew her. Aren't I important?' " Tostenson said.

It again made her question whether Clinton, who attended Wellesley College 60 miles down the road, could really relate to a small-town New Hampshire working mother whose parents couldn't afford to send her to college.

Though Tostenson is a supervisor, paying the bills is still a struggle. The $1,000 it costs to fill a 300-gallon oil tank that heats the small ranch house she shares with her second husband, 23-year-old son and 70-year-old father is almost as much as a month's paycheck. She earns more than her husband, who is an assistant manager at a department store, and her son, who stocks shelves at CVS at night.

Tuesday morning she plans to enter the fire station in Canaan to cast her vote for Obama, though she worries whether he has enough experience to be president. Her hope is that he will hire the right people, make sound decisions and manage around obstacles, just as she has.

"I really think it all comes down to the right person at the right time," she said. "It shouldn't be about what gender they are. It really shouldn't be about what color they are. It really needs to be about what they are going to do about our issues and problems."