Gingrich Makes Splash Testing Waters

With all the hoopla of a presidential candidate and the self-described “impishness” of an excitable youngster, House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been puddle-jumping across New Hampshire’s political landscape this weekend, making a big splash wherever he lands.

But he should make a bigger splash than anyone imagined possible today, when he shares the billing with President Clinton at a senior citizens forum in Claremont, N.H., a mill town near the Vermont border. An agreement on the joint appearance was announced Saturday, culminating negotiations on its format that stretched over two days between the two camps.

“The President is looking forward to the event,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

For Gingrich, the prospect of going one on one with the President clearly has him enthralled, as he has been by pageantry of the entire weekend--the enthusiastic audiences that greet him, the motorcades and helicopters that transport him and the throng of reporters who follow him wherever he goes.

It’s been a heady spectacle. But if, as many have speculated, this four-day tour is an effort to test the waters for a possible presidential candidacy, the Georgia Republican may think twice before taking a plunge.

His tub-thumping, liberal-bashing message is a real crowd pleaser in this notoriously anti-tax state, long the site of the nation’s first primary every presidential election year. Gingrich’s series of political events here with party activists have been full to overflowing. But even many of his local fans say he has overreached by flirting with a White House bid.

“He’s out of his league,” said James Walsh, a phone company employee in Manchester. “Everyone will say [if he runs], ‘Go back and do your job in Washington.’ ”

While Gingrich says he is not running for President, he is remarkably candid about why he refuses to close the door to the possibility: to get attention for himself and his ideas.

Certainly, he has been given an extraordinary opportunity to do that. He will rendezvous with Clinton today after the President delivers the commencement address at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

The agreed-upon format calls for transforming an originally scheduled Clinton stop at the senior citizens center into a combined appearance in which the President and the Speaker will first give brief statements, then take questions for about 45 minutes from an audience of about 200. Sources said the Gingrich forces had pushed the idea of using talk show host Larry King as the moderator, but the White House balked at that suggestion.

The event came about following impromptu comments by the two men late last week that ultimately led Clinton to invite Gingrich to meet him at the center. Aides to the two men then hammered out the details.

Cable News Network will air the event live at 1 p.m. PDT.

As the talks leading up to the appearance with Clinton proceeded, Gingrich stressed that he did not intend it to be a debate because he insisted he was not in New Hampshire to run for President.

“I am here because I care passionately about American civilization,” Gingrich said with characteristic immodesty in a speech at a Nashua Chamber of Commerce dinner Friday night. “I am trying to shape the entire language and ideas of the 1996 campaign.”

When he was first invited to make the New Hampshire trip, he said he was going because he wanted to see a moose. He told an audience of about 800 that “a certain kind of 4-year-old impishness” led him to see the trip as an opportunity to tease the national media about his political ambitions--and get them to listen to him.

It worked.

Dozens and dozens of reporters, camera crews and media hangers-on showed up for his tour--though the entourage seemed to fall well short of the 200 that Gingrich’s aides were suggesting would cover the event. The staff was prepared to deploy three buses to cart reporters around the state. Only one was needed.

Still, it was a media turnout other presidential candidates would die for. A bank of a dozen television cameras and a phalanx of reporters waited on the Tarmac of Manchester’s airport to watch Gingrich’s showy arrival by helicopter Friday afternoon. The security guards assigned to protect him--local police officers, Capitol Hill officers, even plainclothes detectives--seemed more fitting for a head of state. At one point, rather than walk a few hundred feet to the tent where the Chamber of Commerce dinner was being held, Gingrich rode in a motorcade with two police motorcycles and a squad car.

And just before nightfall Saturday, he drew attention as he spent nearly two hours trying to spot a moose along roadsides. There were no sightings, but he vowed to try again before dawn today.

He is clearly a figure of great fascination to the people of the region, even among those already committed to a presidential candidate. Gingrich attended a fund-raiser in Keene on Saturday morning for Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.), and among the Republicans who came to see him was James McKay, the state chairman of Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar’s presidential campaign. “I don’t get a chance to see the Speaker of the House every day,” said McKay. “He causes a lot of excitement.”

It was excitement that paid off in spades for Bass. With Gingrich as a draw, his campaign committee sold 150 tickets to a breakfast at $100 a pop--about four times the amount they would usually charge for such an event.

The Nashua Chamber of Commerce months ago sold out its Friday dinner tickets and had 200 people on a waiting list. The chamber in past years has invited Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and other national political figures, but “we have never had a response like this,” said Michelle Landry, the chamber’s communications director.

Some who heard Gingrich during his tour left convinced that he should run for President. “He’s an extremely educated and intelligent man,” said Don Wilson, a physician in Keene. “I think he’s already started running. That speech was the opening shot.”

But more seemed to think Gingrich was doing a fine job as Speaker--and should keep doing it.

“He has a coherent vision about where we’re going,” said Steve Larmon, another Keene resident who heard Gingrich’s speech there. “But he’s got such an important role right now. I hope he doesn’t run for President.”

A lot of other New Hampshire Republicans seem to feel that way. A New York Post poll of 400 GOP voters in the state conducted on the eve of Gingrich’s trip found that 52% would encourage him not to run for President.

Compared to Dole, who has run for President twice before, Gingrich may be at a particular disadvantage in New Hampshire, where voters expect--and usually receive--plenty of one-on-one time with attentive candidates. “People are probably more comfortable with Dole because they know him better,” said Mark Young, a banker from Bedford. “He’s been up here for years. Gingrich is so new, he just shot onto the scene.”

Ironically, some of the New Hampshire residents most enthusiastic about Gingrich possibly running for President were Democrats who showed up at many of Gingrich’s stops.

“I would love to see him under that kind of scrutiny,” said Mark MacKenzie, president of the state AFL-CIO, which helped organize a demonstration of more than 70 people outside the Nashua Chamber of Commerce dinner to protest GOP proposals to curb the growth of Medicare spending. “I don’t think he’s as marketable in New Hampshire as they think he is.”

Times political writer Robert Shogan, in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this story.