'You only live once, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate,' one voter said. She then added: 'I hope.'

The Summer of Trump is on the cusp of becoming The Autumn of The Donald. Just don’t expect everyone in the party to like it.
Talk to New Hampshire Republicans and the conversations eventually turn to Trump, the billionaire braggart who is atop national and local polls. This public fascination with Trump, GOP voters say with a mix of disbelief and disgust, was not supposed to have lasted this long. But as summer comes to a close, they cannot avoid it. Candidates now are adjusting their plans for a fall campaign, trying to keep their heads down and avoiding Trump’s signature barbs.
“Don’t get me started,” Manchester resident Vasoulla Demos said as she waited to meet New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a weekend Greek festival. “I cannot even talk about it. Here’s Chris Christie, talking with voters. And Donald Trump,” she trails off, shaking her head. “Don’t we have enough troubles in this country already?”
As Demos chatted with TIME, Christie was making his way through a church parking lot, hugging some admirers and kissing others at the end of a long day of campaigning. He had conducted two marathon Q&A sessions where he answered questions about anything voters brought up: gun rights, veterans’ benefits, drug abuse and addiction, foreign aid, even his kids’ summer jobs. Now, he was talking about loukoumades and gyros at that Greek festival. To an aide, he kept passing a seemingly endless supply of sweets.
“You just run your race. Because as it stands, right now, nothing and no one is having an influence on Donald anyway. Right? So why try to? It doesn’t make any sense,” Christie tells TIME in an interview. “I can’t worry about anyone else. I have enough to do on my own.”
His keep-your-head down approach is one shared by his rivals. A day earlier, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina met with small-business owners to talk about his White House hopes. And a day later, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas visited a bee farm, a church and a roadside lobster stand.
Despite embracing the traditional New Hampshire way of campaigning—person-to-person pitches, organizing grassroots leaders and recruiting volunteers—each of these candidates is badly trailing Trump. Christie, a onetime establishment favorite, has not yet caught fire but is quietly building a list of potential supporters. Graham is tailor-made for conservatives who place national security atop their list but isn’t connecting with voters. (Graham is at risk of being excluded from an upcoming CNN debate.)
And Cruz, a Tea Party firebrand, is counting on Trump’s support to flame out and his backers to turn to him. “We’re running a grassroots campaign, one that goes person to person, one house at a time. That’s the New Hampshire way,” Cruz said.
This trio, which spent the weekend in New Hampshire, embodies the constituencies that form the modern GOP. But they have been sidelined. The campaign’s traditions and rules have been upended by celebrity and bombast.
Take Trump’s trip to New England this weekend. He skipped New Hampshire and opted for a 2,000-person confab behind high fences and velvet ropes on Friday evening near Boston. Three helicopters circled overhead as though they were covering the Super Bowl and not a showy annual event organized by a car dealer.
Again, he promised to build a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. It won him cheers. “The Great Wall of China is 13,000 miles. This wall is 2,000,” he said. “Give me a break. It’s so easy, it will be great.” He then pivoted to an unfounded attack on a longtime senior adviser to Clinton; Huma Abedin, Trump suggested without any evidence, was passing classified information to her husband.