Independent Voters May Hold the Key to Candidates’ Fortunes in N.H.

Richard Dauber does not live in the quaint New Hampshire where New Englanders chat around cracker barrels, nor is his neighborhood surrounded by the poverty associated with closed textile mills.

His part of this small town near the Massachusetts line is a pleasant swatch of modern suburbia, a neighborhood of contemporary split-level tract homes distinct from California’s Mission Viejo or Woodland Hills only in the details: The boats are parked against a backdrop of pine woods; the kids dribbling basketballs wear mittens.

Dauber, who moved here from Long Island, N.Y., in 1992, is an electrical engineer, a political independent, and undecided as Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary nears. He is just the sort of voter expected to determine political fortunes here next week--particularly those of publishing magnate Steve Forbes and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander.

“These are the voters who are looking around for a dance card,” and Alexander and Forbes are the two most assiduously courting them, said pollster Neal Rhoades of the Wirthlin Group.

For a while, it looked as if Forbes had gained an early lock on independent voters. Some polls even showed his strength with that group pushing him to neck-and-neck status with the race’s early front-runner, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas.

*

But since Forbes’ disappointing showing in Monday’s Iowa caucuses--in which he finished a distant fourth while Alexander rallied for a third-place finish--his poll numbers have dropped. And it appears Alexander is the one grabbing most of those votes.

Still, there are plenty of voters such as Dauber who remain undecided and could either further boost Alexander or recharge Forbes’ lagging campaign.

Dauber, 33 and married, is registered as “undeclared,” which means he can pick a Democrat, Republican or Libertarian ballot next week. As a result, he and other independent-minded voters, who make up as much as 27% of the electorate, are in demand.

They are a relatively young, affluent, and well-educated group, clustered in the southern and eastern parts of the state, not far from Boston.

“Historically I’ve considered myself Republican,” Dauber said. “But I’m a little scared this time. Most of the candidates are too conservative for me.”

Comments like that probably set off vote-detecting radar at the Alexander and Forbes campaign offices, said political analysts such as Pete Snyder of Luntz Research.

*

To emerge from the shadows of Dole and political commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, who finished first and second, respectively, in Iowa, “Alexander and Forbes are going to have to pick up some of the moderates,” said Snyder.

To complicate the matter, said Rhoades, these independent voters tend to ponder their choices right up to election day.

Ten days before the primary, Dauber’s ruminations went like this:

“Buchanan and Dole, I think they’re extremely right--too conservative for me. Buchanan is talking about ‘the right to life,’ and I think the government ought to stay out of it.

“I like most of the things I see about Mr. Forbes--he’s a little more toward the middle. But a lot of questions remain to be answered.”

A mile or so away, independent Mark Krawczyk had already settled into his political view.

As he stood in the doorway of the family’s upscale townhouse, he said, “From everything I’ve seen, I like the flat tax,” the cornerstone of Forbes’ campaign.

A 32-year-old stockbroker, Krawczyk is probably as typical a Forbes supporter as they come. The father of three children, Krawczyk moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts eight years ago, in part, he said, to get away from high taxes.

*

He and his wife were both Democrats at one time, but switched to undeclared in 1992 because of their strong support for the independent presidential candidacy of Ross Perot.

This year, after some intense CNN and C-Span television viewing, Krawczyk decided to back Forbes, drawing a comparison to Perot: “He has no political connections, and he’s not doing it for the money.”

Forbes campaign manager Bill Dal Col said his candidate’s campaign is appealing to the sort of voter Krawczyk represents.

Neither Forbes nor Alexander wants to recognize the other as the chief rival for the independent vote, but their presence in independent-rich southern New Hampshire is unmistakable.

If Forbes had looked out the window of his campaign bus as it rolled into the small southern New Hampshire town of Milford on Valentine’s Day, for instance, he couldn’t have missed the red-and-black plaid hubbub around the town gazebo. It was there that former Education Secretary William J. Bennett--whose “Book of Virtues” is a moral touchstone for some voters--stood beside Alexander and endorsed him.

*

Likewise, Alexander had to have seen the building a block away, where Forbes was about to deliver his message of “hope, growth and opportunity” to a Rotary Club luncheon crowded with youngish entrepreneurs.

Asked about this proximity, Alexander shrugged. “I can’t keep track of my own schedule, let alone my opponents,” he said.

Alexander press secretary Dan McLagan said Forbes supporters began defecting to Alexander toward the end of the Iowa caucus campaign because they were turned off by Forbes’ negative ads and attracted to Alexander’s “outsider” status. Alexander has pressed the point in ads calling Forbes “a Wall Street insider.”

That sort of sniping between Forbes and Alexander continued into Thursday’s debate in Manchester as the two scrapped over Alexander’s profiting from investments while in government and Forbes’ failure to make public his tax returns.

McLaughlin said he was nudged into backing Alexander by what he saw at a friend’s debate-watching party in the Manchester suburb of Bedford.

A salesman for Digital Equipment Inc., the 38-year-old McLaughlin has a political life story echoing that of many of the 130 or so people milling in the large Victorian house (a large number of whom were already Alexander supporters).

“I was originally a Boston Irish Catholic Democrat,” McLaughlin said after the debate. He changed affiliations when he moved to New Hampshire, he said, “for monetary reasons--I felt the Democrats were taking my money and giving it away.”

Now, while he cannot recall if he is officially registered as Republican or undeclared, he sees himself as basically “independent,” and is doing some soul-searching about just where his views fit into the ideological spectrum.

*

“Dole is the same old thing,” he said. “Buchanan is so far out there it’s scary. A month and a half ago, Forbes seemed like a good alternative. . . . Then I realized that I didn’t know a lot about this guy.”

About that time, he said, several of his friends--professionals and entrepreneurs in their 30s, immigrants to New Hampshire, parents--began falling like dominoes into the Alexander camp. So McLaughlin started listening to both Forbes and Alexander ads.

As he stood in his friend’s kitchen next to a refrigerator covered with a child’s arithmetic homework, McLaughlin said that watching the debate crystallized his decision. “Alexander,” he said, “is the only candidate who has remained attractive over time.”

Dal Col saw Forbes’ support growing, but analysts Rhoades and Snyder predicted a growing disenchantment with the publisher will make Alexander a decisive winner in the contest for independents.

Richard Dauber of Hudson was not so sure.

After watching the debate at his home, he came away uncertain of which candidate to support: “It didn’t clarify things for me.”