Stanford GSB: Stanford Business May 2000

Stanford Business

May 2000, Volume 68, Number 3

First Person: Politics Up Close and Personal

In my little state of New Hampshire, we take our presidential primaries seriously. After all, it's our chance to capture the nation's attention.

By KELLY TEEVAN, MBA '82

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez

EVERY FOUR YEARS NEW HAMPSHIRE is the staging area for a drama of American politics: the first-in-the-nation presidential primary race.

I'm of two minds about this whole thing. Sometimes I feel that New Hampshire's place on the stage and the message its election results sends are a bit like The Mouse That Roared. It's our one chance as a state small in population and geography, known for its villages, woods, mountains, lakes, farmhouses, and stone walls, to gain national relevance and to prove that we're not a 19th-century backwater. We roar our election results—hoping always to befuddle the experts and to elevate the underdog—and then we fade from the national map for three and a half years.

But, more profoundly, there's more to what we do than give forth an occasional roar. My brief six years here have shown me that the Granite State has preserved a way of politics: a retail, up-close-and-personal way of campaigning—indeed, a way of civic life—that needs preserving and will serve the nation well once we get the damned corrupting big money out of campaigns.

Yes, the presidential primary is a big deal within our state borders. It's so big that the only thing that's been able to attract all six living New Hampshire governors into one place was a panel discussion of the primary right here in Goffstown last January. The importance of the primary drew unprecedented unanimity among the governors, past and present. Believe me, any governor here would rather renege on the virtually required pledge to veto any and all broad-based state taxes (sales and income) than to lose our first-in-the-nation primary status.

The primary, though a 20th-century invention, is as much a part of our identity as the Old Man in the Mountain (a granite profile up in the White Mountains) and our contrary, independent-minded Yankee-ness. Without the primary, would New Hampshire even be on the map? The primary is critical, too, for the political power it gives to governors and party leaders who can deliver a victory. It's a ticket to the political big time in D.C. Finally, the primary is commerce. The expenditures for ads, junk mail, journalists' hotel rooms and bar bills, and the Secret Service (paid for by you) add up to a lot in this little state. Take Bob Molloy, who placed this ad in the Manchester Union Leader's Primary Primer: "Since 1976, NO Candidate for President has won the New Hampshire Primary without first renting a microphone from Bob Molloy." Where would Bob be without our primary?

We've etched our first-in-the-nation status into granite—well, into state law anyway. Last winter you could catch an exhibit on the primary at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord. We've got a group called the Library and Archives of New Hampshire's Political Tradition. And at St. Anselm College's Institute of Politics, there's a distinguished visitor with the title Fellow of the New Hampshire Primary.

And how are we as voters? Eugene McCarthy once described the New Hampshire voter as a suit of long underwear frozen on a clothesline. More of us are registered as independents than as members of any party, so maybe we don't warm quickly. We take our voting responsibility seriously—it's our job to kick these candidates' tires. Since 1952, only once has the winner in New Hampshire not won the White House. (In 1992, favorite son Paul Tsongas beat out the self-declared Comeback Kid, now our sitting president.) And, if you're going to ask for our vote, we're going to want to know something about you as a person. It goes like this: "Well, what do you think about candidate Bush (Gore, etc.)?" "Well, I don't know yet—I've only met him twice."

Indeed, it's easy to meet the candidates. They're all over. You look them up in the papers, just like the movie listings: Gary Bauer is playing at noon in Hudson, at 2:00 in Exeter, at 4:00 in Portsmouth, and at 8:00 in Durham. I met Tipper Gore at a neighbor's house. What impressed me most was that she didn't want to stump-speak; she was very personable and wanted to chat with each and every person in that backyard. I didn't attend a March 1999 party for Mr. Gore that I was invited to. I didn't yet understand that these are not friends-only parties where you're expected to write a check. No, you're expected to window shop and maybe kick a suspect tire.

So, I finally saw Al at my dentist's (well, in a snapshot). My dentist, in the midst of installing my latest crown, whipped out photos of the Gores with her family—in her house! The Gore campaign wanted to visit a home with a Manchester address, and my dentist, undecided on whom she supported, obliged. Hey, in a year, this might be a photo of the whole family—with the president.

I saw George W. Bush down in front of the Goffstown True Value Hardware last winter. He was in front of his big bus, all by himself, looking like he was waiting to be turned on. Bill Bradley appeared on Hardball at the beautiful Chapel Arts Center in town. His campaign office called us all the time with invitations. Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer were real candidates here. They may not have made it to your state, but we got to see them.

Steve Forbes: Now there's a different kind of candidate. In 1996, Steve Forbes proved you can't buy New Hampshire: He spent $4 million on ads and finished fourth. To win, a candidate has to get out and press the flesh, take a chance on the unexpected, and show how he or she acts as a human being. Well, Steve got out here to Goffstown this year and, boy, did he make a lasting impression! With a little help from Willie Nelson.

I was driving home through Goffstown Village. I was slowing at the white-steepled Congregational Church when I saw a big bus parked in front of ye olde Town Hall. People with STEVE FORBES signs were milling around. I stopped at the Cumberland Farms, a few hundred yards on, to buy milk. As I crossed the clogged road back to my car, I heard music. Here came the Forbes bus over the bridge, blaring Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." The jaunty tune and the wave of the friendly bus driver gave way to the stern face of the serious Mr. Forbes, already at his desk on the bus, focusing on something beyond Goffstown. This "long underwear" was not thawing for Forbes.

Again this year, Mr. Forbes proved that sweat equity is the coin of the realm here in New Hampshire. And that's the main point. It seemed in 1996 that our retail politics was going the way of the mom-and-pop store. The category killers had come to town. The Republican primary was a television and radio blitzkrieg, with Forbes setting the pace. It felt imposed, foreign, and wrong. Lamar Alexander's plaid shirt and Buchanan's threatening populism made a pretense of elbow-rubbing-as-usual. The Democrats, of course, had no contest. Other states made serious noises about taking our status as first in line. Our grasp on personal politics was slipping.

This year, had it not been for Senators McCain and Bradley, Bush and Gore might have succeeded in campaigning from afar, with a few limited and very controlled local appearances. But Gore had to come out of his shell, and people felt they knew him better. Bush never quite bellied up to the bar, but he appeared to be pushing hard by the final week. Bauer and Keyes made the bigger guys squirm and get specific on the issues.

One voice in me says that just maybe New Hampshire has preserved a political way of life that the Constitution's framers envisioned—of one-on-one politics and a land where anyone can run for president. And I like to think that when we get the big money out of campaigning, activists can transplant our tradition to fertile grounds elsewhere.

Another voice—the guy who doesn't like crowds and traffic in the village and being polled every 20 minutes, and who can burn only so much junk mail for heat—wishes that all the candidates' buses would line up behind Steve Forbes' bus. As far as he's concerned, Willie Nelson can serenade them right down the Daniel Webster Highway to the state line at Nashua.