Many New Hampshire Voters Still Comparison Shopping

A table of crackers, ham sandwiches and fresh coffee had been set up for Wesley K. Clark at the little country store on Main Street. But he’d have to penetrate the crush of humanity that stood between him and the food.

A lot of voters sporting the retired general’s stickers and stretching to shake his hand weren’t there to support him so much as check him out.

With hours before the polls open here for the nation’s first primary Tuesday, New Hampshire is still shopping hard -- looking for a Democrat who not only has the capacity to be president but the ability to defeat George W. Bush.

“The devastation he has caused needs to be rectified,” said Diane Bruyckere, a 45-year-old homemaker who faced down the crowd and 11-degree arctic chill over the weekend. She hoped a last look at Clark would help make up her mind.

Every New Hampshire primary has its defining issue. In 1988 it was taxes. In 1992 it was a recession so devastating that five banks closed in a single afternoon.

Now it is electability, which may reflect the fact that times are relatively good here, giving voters the luxury to consider matters other than their pocketbooks.

The real estate market that collapsed a decade ago saw housing prices soar in the most recent recession. The unemployment rate statewide is a healthy 4.5%. Per capita income is sixth-highest in the nation. And Manchester’s once abandoned textile mills are filling with shops and offices -- 2,000 new jobs were created there in the last two years.

Still, there has been enough hardship to leave many of the 1.2 million people in this state feeling upset.

One-fifth of its manufacturing jobs were lost as a result of the last downturn. In the sparsely populated north country, where paper and timber mills once thrived, unemployment runs as high as 9%. Health care, the Iraq war and education are high on the list of voter complaints.

All that is underscored by a visceral dislike for Bush among Democrats, who view him as a polarizing figure who ran as a moderate then governed as a conservative. Some are still bitter about the way he took office.

“It’s pretty much a given around here. Democrats oppose the war and believe the economy is in terrible shape, and they think the problem is Bush,” said Dick Bennett, a pollster and researcher in Manchester.

Finding a nominee who will succeed beyond New Hampshire’s borders is an unusual sentiment for this state’s famously independent voters. They generally back the candidate they like best with little thought to how he might perform down the road in November.

But this time, Howard Dean’s disappointing third-place Iowa finish last week and the legendary primal scream that followed caused many to give Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the winner, a second look.

Kerry’s numbers promptly shot up in the polls -- not because New Hampshire thinks Iowa knows better, but because a frontrunner who belly-flops in the first test of this political season gives voters here pause as they look beyond their northeastern corner to a national campaign.

“I liked Dean, but he didn’t look too presidential. He looked like a maniac,” said Kevin Burke, a retired computer engineer from Meredith who is now looking at Kerry and Sen. John Edwards.

The painstaking selection process going on up and down this small state is like some political edition of “Survivor.” New Hampshire is straining to consider what will fly in parts of the country less like this unusual place; it has no sales tax, no state income tax and holds by the motto “Live Free or Die.”

Kerry has the resume, but, they wonder, can a lanky New Englander in corduroys and cuffed snow boots win the South? Edwards has genteel civility and a North Carolina drawl, but is one term in Congress enough experience?

Clark has the military gravitas, but does he have the campaign polish? Sen. Joe Lieberman has an unquestioned reputation for integrity, but why hasn’t his campaign caught fire?

“Voters have become tactical in the primaries. It’s as if everybody does focus groups,” said James Carville, a Democratic strategist who helped put Bill Clinton in the White House.

New Hampshire voters this year see their primary as a weeding process with national purpose and they come seriously to the task. Recent polls showed as many as half of those surveyed remain undecided or open to changing their minds, which could explain the overflow crowds. Voters squeeze campaign stops into their daily schedules, some going to near-heroic lengths to make an informed choice.

One still-undecided woman from Belmont left her doctor’s office after laser eye surgery and headed straight to one of Kerry’s ubiquitous chili feeds in the next town over. (His campaign estimates he has served 200 gallons of the stuff in two months, with beans.)

A community college administrator dropped in to see Edwards at a belt factory before heading over to the Home Depot to buy a bathroom fixture on his day off. He still intended to take another look at the candidate at an event in his neighborhood tonight.

For their part, the candidates have resorted to antics that border on absurd, if not perilous, to capture the attention of an electorate in which shaking the hand of a presidential hopeful is so commonplace, one in five has done it.

New Hampshire has been treated to the likes of Clark handing out Dunkin’ Donuts from a drive-through window in Derry, bagging groceries at Sully’s Superette in Goffstown and getting a haircut in the picturesque Portsmouth. In Newport, Kerry decided to go ice-skating then thought better of it, but not before a CNN cameraman slipped on the outdoor rink and had to be taken away in an ambulance.

If politics is what makes New Hampshirites tick, it is also what ticks them off. At the 10-Pin Bowling Alley in Merrimack this weekend, the management discovered hundreds of Edwards seekers trampling the varnished lanes in street shoes -- and threatened to summon the authorities.

A characteristically congenial Edwards forsook his bowling turn to whoop up the crowd from atop a pool table in yet another display of positive campaigning that helped him land an unexpected second in Iowa.

Civility is huge here in the Granite State. When Kerry began reciting a list of Bush’s presidential failings, a woman in the audience who would like nothing more than to see Bush lose was heard to whisper -- “I don’t want to hear what he did wrong, I want to hear what you’re going to do.”

Beating Bush may be the goal, but people here want their issues addressed just the same, concerns that tend to mirror the country at large. Opposition to the war here helped fuel Dean’s insurgent bid from the start.

Education -- particularly Bush’s controversial No Child Left Behind Act -- has burdened local schools with a much-reviled unfunded mandate to improve student academic performance. And health care was mentioned by more than one-third of likely voters as their top concern in a recent Times poll.

Signs declaring “I’m a health care voter” dot the roadside snowdrifts, and stories of human struggle come up at virtually every forum.

At a Bagel Works in Concord, an 8-year-old girl asked Lieberman why her father -- who just earned a doctorate in literature in England and holds two jobs as a professor -- still couldn’t afford health insurance. The widow of a veteran decorated with five purple hearts told Kerry she was struggling to pay for her medication on $800 a month.

“It isn’t that New Hampshire voters don’t care about the issues, it’s that they care so much about them they want Bush to go,” pollster Bennett said.

Determined to prove they’re listening, the candidates planned to press this still-waffling electorate until the last minute. Kerry scoured a Merrimack suburb with no sidewalks in 2-degree weather Sunday, seeking warm refuge in the rows of ranch houses.

In one driveway, David and Diana Frothingham and their two young children stood, waiting. The man who wants to be president was greeted by sobering news:

“We’re trying to decide between you and Dean.”

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New Hampshire profile

Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary could further reduce the seven-candidate field of Democratic contenders. Although New Hampshire sends only 27 delegates to this year’s Democratic National Convention, the primary’s historic significance looms large. Since 1972, a candidate who did not finish at least second has not won the presidential nomination for either major party.

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Population snapshot

Independent: 38%

Republican: 36%

Democrat: 26%

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Population

New Hampshire: 1.2 million

Urban residents: 59%

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Ethnicity

White: 96%

Asian: 1%

Latino: 2%

Black: 1%

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Median household

Income: $57,575

Families below poverty line: 4%

Families with preschool children below poverty line: 9%

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Occupation

Management/professional: 36%

Sales/office work: 27%

Production/transportation of goods: 15%

Service: 13%

Construction: 9%

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Top exports

Computers and computer parts, printing machinery and parts, military equipment, telecommunications systems and parts

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Presidential primary history

New Hampshire presidential primary results since 1952 in percentage of total vote. Figures may not add to 100% because of rounding.

Percentage of primary votes

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1968

Democrats

Lyndon Johnson+: 50

Eugene J. McCarthy: 42

Others: 8

Republicans

Richard Nixon: 78

Nelson Rockefeller+: 11

Others: 11

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1972

Democrats

Edmund S. Muskie: 47

George S. McGovern: 37

Republicans

Nixon: 67

Paul Mccloskey: 20

Others: 13

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1976

Democrats

Jimmy Carter: 29

Morris K. Udall: 23

Birch Bayh: 15

Fred Harris: 11

Sargent Shriver: 8

Others: 14

Republicans

Gerald R. Ford: 50

Ronald Reagan: 49

Others: 1

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1980

Democrats

Carter: 47

Edward M. Kennedy: 37

Edmund G. Brown Jr.: 10

Others: 6

Republicans

Reagan: 49

George H.W. Bush: 23

Howard Baker: 13

John Anderson: 10

Others: 5

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1984

Democrats

Gary Hart: 37

Walter F. Mondale: 28

John Glenn: 12

Jesse Jackson: 5

McGovern: 5

Republicans

Reagan+: 5

Others: 8

Reagan: 82

Hart+: 5

Others: 13

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1988

Democrats

Michael Dukakis: 35

Richard Gephardt: 20

Paul Simon: 17

Jackson: 8

Al Gore: 7

Others: 13

Republicans

Bush: 37

Bob Dole: 28

Jack Kemp: 13

Pierre Dupont: 10

Others: 12

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1992

Democrats

Paul E. Tsongas: 33

Bill Clinton: 24

Bob Kerrey: 11

Tom Harkin: 10

Brown: 8

Others: 14

Republicans

Bush: 52

Patrick J. Buchanan: 37

Others: 11

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1996

Democrats

Clinton: 83

Buchanan+: 4

Others: 13

Republicans

Buchanan: 27

Dole: 26

Lamar Alexander: 22

Steve Forbes: 12

Others: 13

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2000

Democrats

Al Gore: 52

Bill Bradley: 47

John McCain: 49

Republicans

George W. Bush: 31

Steve Forbes: 13

Alan Keyes: 6

Gary Bauer: 1

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+Write-in

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Associated Press, primarymonitor.com