Alexander Runs His Race Along New Hampshire’s Byways : Politics: GOP presidential candidate is hiking through state, trying to woo voters with his ‘outsider’ campaign.

Can friendliness propel a person to his party’s presidential nomination? Lamar Alexander certainly hopes so.

Here, in the state that traditionally holds the first primary of each campaign season, Alexander, the former U.S. education secretary and governor of Tennessee, is counting on voters simply liking him more than any of his rivals.

Since July, Alexander has put on his trademark red plaid shirt, khaki pants and brown leather hiking boots to trudge about 70 miles through the state’s small, Colonial town centers and rural farmland highways. Along the way, he has stopped people riding bicycles, mowing lawns, pumping gas or eating ice cream to shake hands and try to explain that he is “from the real world,” not like his out-of-touch rivals in Washington.

“I hope they see me as someone who is walking across their state because that’s where the answers are--not in Washington,” Alexander said Thursday, conducting an interview while he walked on a dusty highway shoulder and waved to each passing car. “I am someone who is genuinely willing to try to get to know the people and listen to them rather than just fly in, buy a lot of television [ads] and fly out.”

It has yet to be seen whether New Hampshire’s campaign-savvy voters will warm to Alexander’s kinder and gentler candidacy or whether they will consider his attempt at sincerity to be just another politician’s attention-getting gimmick.

But the idea is enthusiastically touted by Alexander, who did the same thing in 1978 when he walked across his home state to win the first of his two terms as governor.

In a period when voters are frustrated with unresponsive government, Alexander’s strategists hope that their candidate’s willingness to risk sidewalk confrontations and to weather six-mile hikes on hot summer days will demonstrate some of the populist values rarely assigned to Washington these days.

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“We talk about the walk having integrity because if we say we’re going to do it, we do it,” said Lewis Levine, who served as Alexander’s chief of staff in Tennessee and is now coordinating the New Hampshire walk. “What he wants to show is that he’s disciplined, because he’s got a goal and he can achieve a goal and he’s accountable.”

As the Republican presidential race develops, Alexander’s campaign has so far been left in the ranks of obscurity, joining several other potential contenders who rank far behind the leader, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, in opinion polls. Like most other campaigns, Alexander’s aides begin their strategy on the assumption that Dole will eventually fail.

But in the race to be the Republican alternative, Alexander’s campaign has been forced to tangle with another candidate running as an anti-Washington outsider--California Gov. Pete Wilson.

Publicly, each campaign is dismissive of the other’s chances of catching on as a serious contender.

“We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the Alexander campaign,” said Wilson spokesman Dan Schnur. “The sum total of Alexander’s message is: ‘I am a Washington outsider,’ which doesn’t do much to separate him from Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter.”

But increasingly, the two Republican camps have exchanged hostilities. Last week, as Wilson formally announced his presidential campaign, Alexander began a series of radio ads in New Hampshire that criticize Wilson’s record as governor and highlight the Californian’s 1976 attack on Ronald Reagan’s presidential bid.

Alexander also complained that Wilson’s high-profile stand against affirmative action is unhealthy for the country.

“What Gov. Wilson is trying to do is pick three or four things people are mad about and go on TV and denounce them,” Alexander said. “That’s not what I think we need in a President. I think we need a President who can turn our anger into hope and lift us up and lead us into the next century.”

While the two differ on issues, they also offer a sharp contrast of styles. Wilson lacks Alexander’s gregarious warmth and through most of his career has done relatively little of the person-to-person campaigning Alexander revels in, relying instead on heavy use of TV advertisements.

Which strategy will work better remains to be seen. Alexander’s aides acknowledge that his walk may win him an election for best next-door neighbor, but not necessarily for President. Other candidates, particularly for governor, have tried the same thing before with mixed results.

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Alexander’s other distinctive mark in the campaign so far has been his emphasis on shifting power from the federal government to the states--what policy experts dub “devolution.”

While the idea has been embraced by each of the leading GOP candidates, Alexander goes farther than his rivals--arguing that while Washington should not impose liberal policy ideas on the states, it should not foist conservative solutions on them either.

Speaking to about a dozen people over a ham sandwich lunch in Exeter’s Town Hall on Thursday, Alexander held up the five-inch-thick copy of a welfare reform bill proposed by Dole.

“This is 831 pages of regulations,” he exclaimed, shaking the document at his audience. “That’s ridiculous. What I’m trying to say is that in Washington, this is considered a good piece of craftsmanship. In Exeter or Nashville, this is considered a lot of baloney. We ought to have about a four- or five-page bill that would send all the decisions back here.”

It takes a little while before Alexander’s audiences catch on to the full extent of his plan. The candidate said he opposes gun control, promotes education reform and opposes abortion rights. But as President, he would not try to enforce his positions. Instead, he would cede that role to states, even if it meant they adopted laws he opposed.

Later today, for the 13th time, Alexander plans to use a worn piece of pink chalk to mark another X on the pavement where his trek across New Hampshire stops for the day. In about three weeks, he expects to return to the spot to begin again on his 85-mile journey, which is scheduled to end just before the New Hampshire primary next February.

“Almost no one up here thinks it’s odd for me to walk down the road on the left-hand side in a red plaid shirt as a way to run for President,” Alexander said. “Another thing I’ve learned is that 85% to 90% of the people have not made a final decision about who to vote for. . . . It’s a wide open race.”