For Voters Wary of Clinton, No Rival Fills Void

Sitting in the comfortable living room of Don and Karen Carrignan’s home here, a group of New Hampshire voters captured the central issue on which the race for the Democratic presidential nomination now hinges: They no longer are confident that they trust Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, but they have not found a comfortable alternative.

Repeatedly, the eight voters gathered by The Times to watch Friday night’s nationally televised debate among the Democratic candidates insisted that unsubstantiated adultery allegations recently directed at Clinton in a supermarket tabloid should have no role in the campaign.

But as the six registered Democrats, one independent (who in New Hampshire can vote in either party’s primary) and a Republican discussed the debate, their comments indicated that despite that view, the allegations may now color their reactions to other matters Clinton talks about.

“I’m not sure he’s willing to level” with voters about the costs of his economic program, said Dan Harkinson, a 39-year-old lawyer.

“I felt he was holding something back,” 29-year-old Jackie Lawson, an accountant, said when asked about Clinton’s position on health care.

“I don’t quite trust him,” said Bob Ciderberry, a 52-year-old construction contractor.

Clinton campaign aides and strategists from rival camps confirmed that their own briefings with voters and polls in recent days have shown similar questions surfacing about Clinton.

Said Harrison Hickman, pollster for Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, “The polls (specifically asking about the adultery allegations) in a curious way give (Clinton) the benefit of the doubt: ‘Should it matter?’ For most people, the answer is ‘no.’ ”

What his polls show, Hickman said, is that the adultery issue “opens the door” to questions about Clinton’s basic credibility.

A senior Clinton aide acknowledged that the campaign has seen signs of potential trouble. “If you look at just the hard polling numbers, they’re holding firm,” he said, referring to public and private polls showing Clinton leading the Democratic pack in New Hampshire with about 30% of the vote. But the polls obscure what longer interviews with voters disclose--considerable unease with Clinton and the potential for a sudden, large-scale move away from him.

“There’s still a residual impact we have to overcome,” the Clinton aide said. “The challenge is, how do you do it?”

Clinton’s pollster, Stan Greenberg, said that in his surveys, voters who like Clinton point to his personal qualities for that attitude--his leadership and intelligence, for instance--rather than to specific policy positions. “And that’s much harder to sustain,” Greenberg said.

Voters “want to know if Bill Clinton is genuine,” he said. And because of that, “This race right now is a referendum on Clinton.”

The good news for Clinton remains that none of the other candidates shows signs of catching on as an alternative to him.

In recent interviews, many voters said they like former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas’ ideas, but have trouble picturing him as President. That was underscored by the comments among the voters who gathered to watch Friday night’s debate--afterward, they debated among themselves whether Tsongas reminded them more of television’s Mr. Rogers or the “Saturday Night Live” character Father Guido Sarducci.

Whichever, said Harkinson, “he just doesn’t come across as what I consider presidential.”

Kerrey struck some in the group as strong and forceful. “Because of the problems we have, it’s going to take some passion,” said 41-year-old George Bald, Rochester’s director of economic development and former mayor of nearby Somersworth.

But a larger number of the viewers found themselves put off by Kerrey. One called him too “hot headed” and, therefore, potentially dangerous in a crisis. Kerrey’s intense statements indicated “a real lack of level-headedness,” said Don Carrignan, a 38-year-old certified public accountant.

Some of the voters interviewed at their homes liked Kerrey’s advocacy of national health insurance--the linchpin of his campaign. But the reaction to the debate indicated that Clinton, Tsongas and, to a lesser extent Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, have succeeded in blunting the impact of the issue by advocating health care plans of their own.

With each candidate offering his own plan, “it was hard to follow,” said Caroline McCarley, 39, head of the local school board and a self-described liberal Democrat. “I think it’s clearly an issue,” she said, but the problems are “so huge, I don’t know how you fix it.”

Harkin, who is running as an old-style populist Democrat, drew some support. “We grew up poor, basically,” said Marilyn Berry, 51, a real estate broker. During the 1980s, she said, her family’s income took off, only to collapse again during the current recession. “I like Harkin because he knows the pain of poverty,” she said.

But most of the 20 or so voters interviewed in this blue-collar manufacturing town near New Hampshire’s seacoast expressed little affinity for Harkin.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., meanwhile, appears to have sunk to the level of a fringe candidate, seldom mentioned by voters except when they are specifically asked about him.

If the continued weakness of the opposition is the good news for Clinton, the bad news goes to the heart of his candidacy.

The other four major candidates have each staked out a specific turf--Tsongas as the candidate of tough, no-nonsense economics, Kerrey as the impassioned advocate of national health care, Harkin as the “real Democrat” and Brown as the angry outsider.

Clinton, by contrast, has tried to run as the unifier, the man who can transcend the generation-old split between Democratic left and right and move the party into a victorious future.

Coupled with his deeply ingrained desire to avoid direct confrontation, that strategy has led Clinton to round the edges on his proposals, soften his criticisms of old-party dogmas and appeal as broadly as possible.

So long as voters liked Clinton, that strategy worked wonders, sending the Arkansas governor to the front of the pack. And as he rose, he became even more cautious, adopting a front-runner’s strategy of making no mistakes but taking few risks.

He has, for example, virtually dropped a section of his standard stump speech that talked about welfare reform, a subject on which some liberal Democrats find him controversial.

But now, with his credibility called into question, Clinton faces the downside of his strategy. With voters inclined to wonder about him, his attempts to unify can appear disingenuous, his broad appeals can seem like waffling, his avoidance of conflict evasive.

“There’s just something about him I didn’t trust,” Karen Carrignan, a speech pathologist at a local preschool, said after she watched the debate.

The views of Rochester voters could carry particular weight because the community--New Hampshire’s fourth-largest town with a population of 26,630--and surrounding Strafford County often have proven to be a bellwether of primary results.

The combination of relatively liberal Democrats in Durham, home of the University of New Hampshire, and blue-collar conservatives in Rochester, Dover and other nearby towns, makes the county “must-win territory for Democrats,” said Robert Craig, chairman of the university’s political science department.