Bradley’s Now the Apple of Many a New Hampshire Eye

October in the Granite State has all the trappings of a first date. There are well-meaning suitors like Bill Bradley (“I think that the voters of New Hampshire understand how much I respect them”) and Al Gore (“I’m the underdog here”).

There are objects of affection--voters--and campaign staff as ever-present matchmakers (“Just wait till you get to know him”).

Unfortunately for the earnest Gore, a lot of the electorate here feels like it’s already gone out with his older brother, and the relationship just didn’t click. But Bradley’s another story.

“He’s the new hope for America,” said Yvonne Vissing, a college sociology professor, as she handed out Bradley bumper stickers at the annual Apple Harvest Day festival. “We believe he could be the next FDR, where he really develops a comprehensive plan for America to secure, to enlighten.”

Bradley completes his 11th visit today, courting voters in this deep green state embroidered with the flame tones of fall, and he’s at a distinct advantage heading toward the nation’s crucial first primary to be held here Feb. 1. If Bradley takes tiny New Hampshire--with its population of 1.2 million, just under that of the San Fernando Valley--it could have a domino effect. New York could fall to Bradley next, making California a must-win for Gore as the two men battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The polls have been heading in Bradley’s favor for weeks, likely helped along by the hundreds of volunteers who descended here this summer to knock on tens of thousands of doors and make the necessary introductions.

It’s not hard to find Republicans planning to switch their registration to vote for the onetime professional basketball player in the primary. And in dozens of interviews this crisp fall, the only real heat the vice president has stoked in prospective voters is negative, more fever than ardor. Many here who support Gore sound more far more dutiful than passionate.

“I’ve felt all along that he has earned the opportunity,” said Lorie Chase, a Democrat from Barrington who leans toward voting for the clean-cut Tennessean with the square shoulders and the healthy tan. He’s got good environmental credentials and here she is at the end of the Apple Harvest Day festival packing up her “Save the Cocheco River Watershed” booth.

“Bill Bradley is interesting,” said Chase, 60, who describes herself as “rather liberal.” “I’m watching. I’m open. There’s nothing about Gore I don’t like. It’s a long-term commitment to him, not faint praise.”

Five months ago, the vice president was a shoo-in here, ahead of Bradley in the polls, 68% to 32%. One hundred thousand “Bill Bradley for President” door hangers later, and the former underdog is now in a statistical dead heat with a high-powered, self-proclaimed brand-new underdog.

In the Republican race here, Texas Gov. George W. Bush is so far ahead in the polls that his competitors are vying for second place.

Just who has decided to back the former New Jersey senator in the Live Free or Die state? According to Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, Bradley has a good lock on voters like himself: 45 and older, with college and postgraduate degrees and household incomes of $70,000 and over. Bradley is 56 and was a Rhodes scholar.

“These are the people who will turn out and vote,” Smith said. “The demographics are lining up for Bill Bradley.”

Bradley Downplays Polls

Bradley, himself, calls the positive polls of the last month here, in New York and Rhode Island “snapshots in time” and imprecise indicators of who will come out on top in the first waves of Y2K primaries. Forty percent of the voters, he acknowledges, “don’t know who I am.”

“But I’ve been to New Hampshire 10, 11, 12 times since the first of the year. And also half the people in New Hampshire weren’t there a decade ago. They were in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts,” places where the former New York Knick is well known, he said in an interview. “So there’s a deeper sense of familiarity than in Montana.”

What these midlife Bradley voters like about him, many said, is not just his distance from the present president, but that he promises, like the falling leaves here, a new season. They think, from what they’ve seen so far, that he’s a decent human being.

“I think Bill Bradley is an honest individual, based on his past,” said Dotty Kinsley, 58 and a legal secretary, as she volunteered Sunday at the Concord five-mile breast cancer awareness road race.

And it doesn’t hurt, in this breast cancer survivor’s view, that he has come out with a broad-based health care proposal that might just help people like the Kinsleys. Dotty’s husband is semiretired and depends on her insurance coverage, whose premiums are about to jump 48% in price.

“I might not be able to retire when I’m 62 because of the need for health insurance,” said Kinsley, who is seriously considering voting for Bradley. “There needs to be help there. We’ll manage, but it’ll be a strain from 62 to 65” when Medicare coverage begins.

Republican Considers Switch to Bradley

Catharine Dornin, 53 and a Republican, is considering changing her voter registration to Independent so she can vote for Bradley in the primary, she said as she waited for her son and daughter to finish the breast cancer race.

Bradley had delivered an “inspiring speech” at the music school where Dornin teaches piano, “all about bringing those who have been forgotten into our prosperous economy.” On top of that, she said, there’s the damage that she believes the Republican Texas governor has done to the democratic process.

“I’m very upset that George W. Bush has taken the campaign away from all of the other candidates and that money is enabling him,” Dornin said. “It’s not a coronation. He’s not a prince. It should be open to the people.”

Gore’s support here tends to be with younger, less educated, less affluent voters, according to the polls. And the vice president is so far leading among liberal Democrats, 56% to 35%, which surprises Smith.

The UNH polling director points to certain positions that Bradley has taken that are more progressive than Gore’s--such as his support for gays in the military--and notes that the numbers “tell me people don’t know what Bradley is yet.”

And he believes that support will likely shift, in either direction, the more voters learn about both candidates.

Jane Graham of affluent New London, for example, is one liberal who already backs Bradley.

She acknowledges that she isn’t that well-versed in all of the candidate’s specific positions, but she agrees with him on abortion rights and wants to see a “clean sweep of the White House.” She likes his health care plan in part because she is worried about affording prescription drugs when she finally retires--for the second time.

“I am collecting Social Security the local college library. “I’m concerned that when I leave my job I won’t be able to afford the $350-$360 a month I spend for prescription drugs.”

Graham is enough of a Bradley partisan that if the general election comes down to a race between Gore and Bush, she promises to vote for “a phantom candidate, a write-in candidate . . . a woman candidate, Geraldine Ferraro.”