Bill Shore, founder and executive chair of the anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength, worked in the New Hampshire primary campaigns of Senators Gary Hart (D-CO) and Bob Kerrey (D-NE)

For nearly half a century I have been a New Hampshire presidential primary junkie. Voters there changed my life and career, though that was neither their concern nor intention. More important, they changed the lives of millions of America’s most vulnerable children.

More than 40 years ago, in the months leading up to 1984, and like countless others before and since, I made my way to New Hampshire to volunteer in the grassroots campaign of a dark horse presidential candidate hoping to break out of the pack. The volunteering was involuntarily on my part. The campaign of then Colorado Senator Gary Hart had run out of money.

But following a surprising second place showing in Iowa, Hart’s victory in the 1984 New Hampshire presidential primary launched him into national prominence, creating a two-person race between Hart and former Vice President Mondale. Money was no longer an issue. It poured in and we traveled the rest of the country competing in primaries and caucuses through June. Hart came in a close second to Mondale at the Democratic Convention, and the presumptive frontrunner for 1988.

The sharpest words of the entire 1984 primary season were Mondale quoting a Wendy’s commercial “Where’s the beef?” Nobody threatened to put anyone else behind bars, used derogatory nicknames, competed under the cloud of felony indictments, or elevated political stunts to the level of busing desperate migrants to other states.

For many, Gary Hart is frozen in time from that era. They are surprised when I tell them my then-boss and now friend is 87 years old. But not surprised that he is still reading voraciously, writing selectively, in active correspondence with friends and world leaders, and still mentoring and inspiring many of us.

As for myself, I like to think my work, though outside of politics, is part of the legacy of the Hart campaign. I embraced Gary’s conviction that ideas mattered. And witnessed that politics, as vital as it is, leaves too many people on the sidelines, I was inspired to create alternate ways for people to share their strengths. Along with my sister Debbie, also a Hart campaign veteran, we created what has grown to be one of the nation’s largest hunger and poverty organizations: Share Our Strength.

Hart’s winning playbook for the New Hampshire primary became our playbook: ignite activism with ideas, organize in concentric circles of influencers, make room for and include everyone who wants to help, look beyond the usual suspects and put your trust in the next generation of young leaders. The only difference is we weren’t organizing a political campaign so much as a movement to end the unnecessary scourge of childhood hunger in America. That movement outlasted the 1984 campaign and most that followed.

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That playbook set Share Our Strength on a course to raise more than $1 billion and launch a campaign of our own, the No Kid Hungry campaign, which added three million kids to the school breakfast program, unlocked funding for 21 million kids to get summer meals when schools are closed, increased access for millions of families to the critical nutritional assistance provided by SNAP and WIC, all while demonstrating that childhood hunger is a solvable problem. While we are a nonprofit and strictly nonpartisan, political advocacy and policy are essential to scaling programs that work.

Gary Hart didn’t become president but he left a legacy, ranging from organizations like Share Our Strength and the national service model City Year, to his 1984 campaign manager, Jeanne Shaheen, who at the time had never run for office, and is now senior senator from New Hampshire.

It gives me faith that New Hampshire primary campaigns will launch more than presidential candidates but also ideas and leaders who will keep fighting for those ideas whether the candidates they support experience victory or defeat. Seen that way, the New Hampshire primary always yields a winner.