Rahm Emanuel Launches Early New Hampshire Bike Tour Raising Money for Children’s Nonprofit, Drawing Mixed Reactions

Rahm Emanuel began a three-day bicycle tour of New Hampshire on Friday, riding from Portsmouth to Hanover while raising money for a state nonprofit that supplies bicycles to underprivileged children. Emanuel is also attending a Democratic Party event in North Hampton before the ride and plans to hold community meetings along the route. His shadow campaign has named the trip the Spin-Free Tour.

The former Chicago mayor announced a grand bargain on education reform last week and has written opinion pieces outlining his national security platform in March and calling for military reform in May. A source familiar with Emanuel said the former mayor feels very strongly that we have an education emergency, and no one is talking about how to solve it.

The same source said the national conversation is so badly warped by Trump and Beltway politics, so from a policy perspective everything flows from that, and he wants to focus on policies and ideas.

Colin Seeberger, a senior adviser at the Center for American Progress, said Americans are pessimistic about the future and are hungry for real solutions. Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said Emanuel’s bike trip comes as the former Chicago mayor has the 2028 stage mostly to himself.

Levesque added that the bike trip is another opportunity to be placing himself in front of voters in a way that creates connection and attention without a typical podium speech.

University of New Hampshire politics professor Dante Scala said Emanuel is embarking on his trip far too early for New Hampshire voters to care. Scala noted that activists are focused more on the midterms and recalled that former Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander hiked around New Hampshire in 1996.