DURHAM, N.H. - Type in #billgardnerfacts on Twitter and you will find a growing group of admirers discussing the "superhuman" qualities of New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, fierce defender of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.

On Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011, Gardner announced that the New Hampshire Presidential Primary could be as early as Dec. 6, 2011, given the current calendar jockeying going on in other states such as Nevada.

Dante Scala, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire who tweets as @Graniteprof, says Gardner is one of the most humble men in politics.

"Even national political media who don't quite get why he's so stubborn about protecting the primary, respect him for it, I think," Scala says. "Bill Gardner is living proof of how an unusually single-minded man, faithful to his cause, can have an awful lot of influence in American politics."

Scala has done his part to support the Twitter cult of Gardner with the following tweets:

• When Bill Gardner went to #UNH, he decided when the semester started.
• In New Hampshire, kids dress up like the Secretary of State on October 31.
• The bench Bill Gardner's sitting on? Three miles tall.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

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