Water Cooler

N.H. Woman Who Made Clinton Cry Voted For Obama

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (CBS) ― The woman who asked Hillary Clinton a question that may have turned around her presidential campaign told CBS station WBZ she ended up voting for Barack Obama.

Marianne Pernold told WBZ's Karen Anderson Wednesday she was undecided up until the moment she entered the voting booth in the New Hampshire Primary Tuesday.

Pernold attended a Clinton event at a restaurant in Portsmouth Monday and asked her how she keeps going in the grueling campaign.

"It's not easy. It's not easy," Clinton said as her eyes welled up and her voice broke repeatedly.

"And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do," she said, her voice catching.

"You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards," she said, her voice trailing off. The voters in the restaurant applauded encouragingly.

The next day Clinton won the primary, despite polls showing her trailing Obama.

Pernold realizes now that her question may have ended up being more powerful than her vote.

"I didn't know what to do," she said. "I was freefalling. I loved the fact that she opened up like that to all of us."

She told Anderson she wanted everyone to know who she voted for so people wouldn't think she was a "plant" at the event for the Clinton campaign.

Pernold said she knows her question may have helped Clinton win New Hampshire.

"Three of my friends called that afternoon and said, 'Marianne, because of what happened I'm changing my vote,'" Pernold said.

But in the end, it wasn't enough to sway Pernold.

"I took a walk on the beach and all I though was how Obama made me feel and I thought about Hillary's response to me, and I thought she was a soft feminine woman for seven seconds," she said. "When she turned, she adapted this political posture again, the stiffness and the rhetoric, and I said I really want to vote for Obama."

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)