‘Run Granny Run’: New Documentary Depicts 94 Year Old’s Senate Run
At 89, Doris Haddock walked 3,200 miles across the country to draw attention to campaign finance reform. At 94, she waged a quixotic campaign for U.S. Senate. Now, at 97, she will see those feats on screen in a documentary.
“Run Granny Run” depicts Haddock’s 2004 decision - with no money and no campaign experience - to go from an activist for voter registration to actively seeking votes in a campaign against the powerful incumbent Republican Sen. Judd Gregg.
The documentary initially had been planned as a road-trip film chronicling Haddock’s efforts to register women and minorities in swing states during a critical election year. But when the presumptive Democratic nominee dropped out of the Senate race, Haddock jumped in on the last day to file.
Filmmaker Marlo Poras decided to hang on though the November election, and recorded 350 hours of footage. “I was thrown into the fire and just kept on following her,” Poras said in a telephone interview.
“Run Granny Run” won the audience award at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. It will be broadcast on HBO at 9 p.m. on Oct. 18.
Publicly, Haddock - who campaigned on her nickname “Granny D” - brashly promised victory. “I love the smell of a landslide in the morning,” she declared to cheers during her campaign announcement speech.
Privately, however, Haddock and company seem acutely aware of having potentially embarked on a fool’s errand. “Run Granny Run” shows Haddock and her staff grappling with weak fundraising, ambivalence from the party establishment, and their own inexperience and self-doubt. Common as these dilemmas may be in grass-roots political campaigns, they are accentuated here by the contrast between Haddock, an aged, elfin, political neophyte, and Gregg, a smoothly confident scion of a political family, former governor and congressman.
In one scene, Gregg and Haddock meet by happenstance on a downtown stroll. They chitchat, he addressing her as “Mrs. Haddock.” Haddock, with a bundle of fliers in hand, is in the process of canvassing shops. He suggests a trade, but when she puts out her hand, Gregg confesses he doesn’t carry campaign literature.
In another, after a tough day of debate preparation, Haddock buries her head on her bed and prays: “Dear God, please don’t let me make a fool of myself.”
“It became important for me to show in the film that she was … aware of the enormity of the task that she was taking on and that there was an absurdity to it,” Poras said.
For her part, Haddock admits being somewhat relieved she lost the election - 66 to 34 percent.
“It was almost immediately after they got elected that they were ending up down there in Washington and making statements about things. And I said to myself, thank God I didn’t make it,” Haddock said in a telephone interview from her home.
She has returned to her core issue of public funding for campaigns and thrown herself into a bill on that topic coming before the Legislature. Haddock recently finished calling all 400 members of the New Hampshire House to ask whether they support the idea. She said more than three-quarters said yes.
“If I can help try to get this bill in, I will have done all I hoped to do,” she said.
She hopes the film helps get the message out.
“Oh, I want to save the world. I want this to - I want it to be that one state after another will become publicly funded and a critical mass will form, this is my vision now. A critical mass will form and it will go federal.”
© 2007 The Associated Press
Dear Granny D,
Looking foolish and being a fool are two separate things. Don’t you worry abit. I’ll vote for you. We don’t need any more slick, packaged, yes men in our congress. All we need is people like yourself who will cast their votes for what is right.
Remember: corruption begins with the first free cigar. So try not to smoke any that you didn’t roll yourself.
Love, Spike
Doris, you’re right; the issue IS publicly-funded elections! BTW, I’d be proud to vote for you.
Granny D, you make a lot of US look foolish for doing nothing at all. If Americans as a whole had even a fraction of your spirit, a lot would be accomplished. Go granny, go granny, go granny, go! Texrey
Had she run as an independent or third party, her efforts would have been of more importance and interest.
The only way to elect a president in the US and not have any cheating or stealing of votes is pick a president by a national lottery. The way it is done now the presidency office is bought, and this campaigning that never ends is insane.
I hear you, Granny D. Let’s get the power out of the corporation’s hands and back into those of We The People! You’d have my vote for sure.
Way to go, Granny D! You are a real inspirition to a young 69 year old neophyte like me. Hey 34% isn’t bad when you consider the way the odds were stacked against you. On a cost per vote basis, I’ll bet you gave ol’ Gregg a real good drubbing. Wish I could have voted for you.
Best, Jim Wrich
Some folks in another thread said they were looking for a hero. Well her she is. Thank you Granny D! Public funding of elections is the only way to clean them up and help us get the pollution of private money out of politics.
She would have been to young and enthusiastic for the Senate anyway. The US Senate is the best nursing home for demented old hypocrites in the world
At 61 you are an inspiration, when I get down thinking about how tired I am working against the monster, I can stop and think of you. Thanks
These Grannies are bullies! Bullies I tells ya!
…and this armchair of mine was just getting cozy!
This blessed soul worried that she might make a fool of herself? Is she kidding? Her strength, courage and determination … makes fools of us. 3,200 miles at her age… this is impossible!
… and I had all my excuses all neatly organized too. Well I sure felt old (I figured that was a really great excuse plus I have a little table next to my armchair for donuts and snacks and…) but she beats me by decades. These Grannies are bullies … and our very best. No joke. Our very best. Does she not redefine the word awesome?
Bullies I tells ya! God bless.
More power to the amazing Granny D!
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“I swear by the God of my parents, I swear by my nation,
I swear by my honor that I will not allow my soul to rest,
nor my arm to relax until I have broken the chains
that oppress my people through the will of the powerful.
Free elections, free land and free men, horror to the oligarchy.”
Oath used by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - the Great,
(when he was 28) and some of his revolutionary friends.
-copied from Page 80, !HUGO! by Bart Jones
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The revolutionary path is bathed in light. Take the oath and do what you can! To be complacent is to be complicit.
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“Almost anything you do [to help humanity] will seem insignificant, but it’s very important that you do it.”
Mahatma Gandi