Combative Union Leader on Fence : N.H. Newspaper Calls ’88 Candidates ‘a Dull Lot’

For political purists here, the fall of 1987 is threatening to be one of those autumns when the fire doesn’t crackle and the cider doesn’t ferment.

Their newspaper, Manchester’s adder-tongued, ultraconservative Union Leader, the newspaper John F. Kennedy once called the most irresponsible in America, still has not taken sides in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Until it does, there won’t be that snap in the air that can redden the cheeks of the most calloused candidates.

In campaigns past, the Union Leader referred to Dwight D. Eisenhower as “a stinking hypocrite,” Lyndon B. Johnson as “Snake Oil Lyndon” and Gerald R. Ford as “Jerry the Jerk.” Its publisher, the late William Loeb, was widely depicted as the Darth Vader of American political journalism.

But this year the Union Leader surveyed the candidates in both major parties and yawned, declaring the field to be “a dull lot” and refusing to bestow either its blessing or its curse on anyone currently running.

“None of them seem to have the leadership qualities we need. No one there could handle it,” said Loeb’s 63-year-old widow, Nackey, who took over the reins of the newspaper after her husband’s death and continues to subscribe to his brand of 100-proof conservatism.

“I think this is one of the most important primaries the country has faced in a long time, and I would hate to endorse someone who is second-best just for the sake of endorsing someone, especially if it was somebody that the Democrats could beat,” Loeb said.

She is hoping that someone more to the paper’s liking will enter the race, even at this late date, and lately she has been using her front-page editorial column to proclaim the virtues of former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.

Candidates Ponder Indifference

The paper’s indifference to declared candidates is causing a good deal of consternation as the conservatives, such as New York Rep. Jack Kemp and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson try to figure out what they have to do to gain an endorsement, and as the front-runners, Vice President George Bush and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, wonder how long they can escape the Union Leader’s well-known contempt for party centrists.

“The Union Leader is playing a very unsettling role right now,” said Dave Carney, a top aide to Gov. John H. Sununu, who has endorsed Bush.

This is the first Republican primary without an incumbent President running since William Loeb’s death in 1981. Today, there are arguments that the paper does not have the influence it once had, not only because Nackey Loeb may be less predatory than her late husband but because the paper’s audience has changed.

Nackey Loeb says she does have a different style.

“I may not be as hard-hitting as my late husband,” she said, “but we have the same principles . . . we have the same victims. We still don’t like the same people.”

Caught up in a spiral of growth and good fortune, New Hampshire, though still a Republican state, has changed a lot, even since Loeb’s death.

Looking at the state’s voting population, with its influx of Democrats and independents from Massachusetts, some political analysts are saying the mix of voters has become more sophisticated, more mainstream and more moderate. They predict that the majority of Republican voters won’t mirror the views of the rural, self-sustaining Union Leader devotees who long dominated the New Hampshire Republican Party.

Dole, in a recent visit to the southern part of the state, clearly did not have the Union Leader conservative in mind when he openly criticized Lt. Col Oliver L. North’s behavior during the Iran- contra affair.

A strong defender of North, the newspaper has sharply criticized New Hampshire Republican Sen. Warren B. Rudman for taking North to task during the Iran-contra hearings. Rudman is expected to endorse Dole.

Said Dole: “I’m glad that Ollie mania is over. I don’t think he served the President well. . . . There are certain things you do not keep from the President of the United States.” Dole was referring to testimony during the Iran-contra hearings that North and other officials did not tell the President about their clandestine and possibly illegal efforts to aid the rebels in Nicaragua.

Dole needs a boost to win in New Hampshire. He admits to being in second place here, behind Bush.

Like most of the Republican candidates, he has visited the Union Leader, but he insists he did not go hat in hand. For example, he said that he would not take the Union Leader’s celebrated “pledge,” in which candidates vow not to raise taxes. Indeed, much of Dole’s message here, especially his repeated commitment to look after the needs of handicapped people, old people and the desperately poor, seemed geared toward the kind of well-to-do moderate Republicans that William Loeb used to mock as “silk-stocking crown princes.”

This does not mean the politicians now believe that the Union Leader has lost its power to make or break campaigns, a feat most dramatically executed in 1972, when the newspaper’s editorial baiting sent the presidential campaign of former Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie into a tailspin from which it never recovered.

Could Still Be Factor

Most of the Republican camps here tend to agree with the assessment of former Gov. Meldrim Thomson that, while the Union Leader’s high-octane conservatism is a bit out of fashion in areas near Boston where the state is growing fastest, it could be an important factor in a close race.

“With the great number of candidates who are running, the outcome could be decided in a little place, like Carroll County, where 80% of the voters are quite conservative,” said Thomson.

Bush, more than any of the Republican candidates, has reason to take the Union Leader seriously. In 1980, he was the Republican front-runner until he came to New Hampshire and found himself the whipping boy of the Union Leader. This year the paper once again is taking potshots at him, casting doubts on his conservatism.

Bush was dismissed as a “wimp” by the newspaper in 1980, but it didn’t stop him from giving one of the testimonials at a memorial service for Loeb or from continuing to court the paper’s favor this fall, according to Bush’s New Hampshire political director, Will Abbott.

“One of the vice president’s sons talked to (Nackey Loeb) before she loaded up the last couple of missiles. She was very cordial, but she said she hadn’t made up her mind about what tack she was going to take,” Abbott said.

Abbott conceded that if the Union Leader whales away at Bush the way it did seven years ago, it could again make serious trouble for the vice president.

“If the Union Leader aggressively criticizes us and, at the same time, promotes a credible alternative, they could take some votes away. I don’t think they could knock us out of first place, but anything is possible,” Abbott said.

These days, Nackey Loeb does not show any signs of warming to Bush. Although she said he does “a good job as vice president,” it is a case of damning with faint praise.

“We all had a classmate like George Bush, the good little boy who the teacher liked. He is so ho-hum.”

The Union Leader Line

The Union Leader’s editor, Joe McQuaid, who also writes editorials, filled out the newspaper’s line on the rest of the Republican candidates:

--”Dole is the consummate middle man. If he sat across the table from Gorbachev, he would sell him our wheat and anything else that wasn’t nailed down.

--”Kemp is a redneck football player who is trying to show the inside-the-Beltway crowd that he knows something about the gold standard. He talks it into the ground and puts to sleep those people who ought to be his basic constituency.

--”Robertson does better pushing his politics through his ministry than he would ministering to the nation. . . . It’s not his niche to be President.”

--Haig, he said, “comes across a little overbearing and pompous.”

Last summer, the Union Leader indulged in a brief flirtation with Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV, the former governor of Delaware who is also a declared Republican candidate.

McQuaid, in an opinion shared by his boss, said he is not sure that Du Pont has the “mettle” to be President, but said he was still impressed with the man because of his strong stands against welfare, farm subsidies and his proposal to take driver’s licenses away from students who use drugs.

At 38, McQuaid is already a 20-year veteran of the Union Leader. A third-generation journalist, McQuaid presides over a staff of nearly 60 who work just beyond his open office door in an old-fashioned city room where the metal desks and linoleum floors hark back almost to the era when McQuaid’s grandfather was covering the Spanish-American War.

Founded 124 years ago, the Union Leader did not gain its modern notoriety until after Loeb took over as publisher in 1946 and began writing front-page editorials.

The combative newspaper enters the public eye beyond New Hampshire every four years, when the nation holds presidential elections. Much of the rest of the time, it is cutting a wide swath through local political issues.

For years, said McQuaid, the Union Leader has been fighting to change a state law that allows minors to have abortions without the consent of their parents. The newspaper fought and lost a battle to prevent interstate banking in New Hampshire. Recently, the paper won a victory that McQuaid said he is especially proud of. He said Union Leader editorials helped pass a law prohibiting homosexuals from becoming foster parents.

“You can call what we do crusading. I don’t mind the use of that word. It’s what a newspaper is supposed to do,” he said.

Loeb and McQuaid snort at the notion that the Union Leader is losing its clout. They say that the daily circulation, at 70,000 the largest in the state, is growing at a brisk pace. They admit that in national elections the paper has had a poor record backing winning candidates in the primary. They point out that that record dates back to William Loeb’s time.

In the 1964 Republican primary, the paper supported Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who won the nomination, but after he lost in New Hampshire. In 1972, the paper got behind former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the Democratic primary. Yorty went nowhere. And in 1976, the Union Leader supported Ronald Reagan, who lost a squeaker that year to Ford.

“Obviously, we have done better opposing candidates than we have endorsing them,” McQuaid said.

People disagree whether the Union Leader still packs the punch it did under William Loeb.

“It just seems to me they haven’t shown the vigor,” said Jay McDuffy, who was for many years a reporter for a competing newspaper.

“You don’t see the depth of investigative reporting since he died. It was the kind of newspaper where a fellow who had just gotten done working at the factory could sit down with, take off his shoes, and really get a bang out of. I don’t see that so much anymore.”

Marshall Cobleigh, a former state legislator who remains a force in Republican Party politics here, disagrees.

“The Union Leader is still influential in setting the agenda and in destroying candidates it doesn’t like,” Cobleigh said. “Maybe it’s done with a velvet glove these days instead of sledgehammer. But it’s still done.”

Target of Sledgehammer

Cobleigh speaks with a certain authority, having felt the sledgehammer.

As Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives during the early 1970s, Cobleigh ran afoul of the Union Leader over the abortion issue.

“They ran this little thing called ‘The Battle of the Child.’ It quoted a little baby saying ‘today my mother killed me with the help of Speaker Cobleigh.’ ”

But there is a silver lining to Cobleigh’s story, demonstrating that even the Union Leader can let bygones be bygones. Today, McQuaid speaks of Cobleigh as a fine fellow. And Cobleigh sings the praises of the Union Leader, whether it’s defending the newspaper’s appraisal of George Bush or recounting, a bit hazily, the time the paper went to bat for Electra the blind ferret.

“Maybe, it was the ferret’s owner that was blind,” said Cobleigh. “The point is the paper started a crusade against this law that prohibited ferrets from being house pets. And, it won.”