ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602160075
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN NICHOLS THE PROGRESSIVE
In New Hampshire, where the demands of politics reach heights unheard of in other states, contenders for the world's most powerful position have to think twice before dismissing an invitation to come around for turkey and trimmings.
``Nobody wants to offend a voter in New Hampshire. The line here is: `One wrong move and you lose the presidency,''' says Peter Robbio, executive director of Pat Buchanan's campaign to win the state's Republican primary.
Every four years the four-tenths of 1 percent of American voters who live in New Hampshire get a chance to reshape the nation's political landscape.
New Hampshire is the spoiled child of American politics - a whiny, demanding brat that constantly threatens to throw an electoral tantrum if it isn't satisfied. The primary campaign pours an estimated $30 million into the state - as hordes of candidates, campaign aides, journalists and other hangers-on flood over the border.
``There are not many small states that have that ability to get Washington to dance to their tune,'' says Curtis Gans, staff director for the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
But what tune are the presidential hopefuls dancing to when they indulge the whims of New Hampshire?
It's not the song of the American mainstream. In fact, political scientists, activists and even the candidates acknowledge it is hard to imagine a less representative state.
``Of course it's not representative,'' University of New Hampshire political science professor Bob Craig says of the state he has studied for more than three decades. ``First and foremost, it is not representative in the minority area. You don't have a large black population. You don't have a large Hispanic population. What you have is a large white population - proportionally one of the biggest in the country.''
Remember the angry white males of the 1994 congressional elections? Well, imagine a whole state where they define the political discourse.
``We've got a lot of right-wing crazies up here, and you'd be surprised how many of them are in charge of things,'' says Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO. ``So much of the power structure of this state - not just in the government but in places like the media - is controlled by right-wingers.''
Ponder these facts about the state that sets the course of our presidential politics:
* New Hampshire is more than 98 percent white, a higher proportion even than states such as Idaho that have long been portrayed as lily-white bastions. The state has no tradition of putting people of color in top political or business positions, nor even of responding to concerns of minority groups.
As such, New Hampshire has long been the only state in the nation that does not sanction a holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
* New Hampshire is one of the nation's least urban states. Almost 50 percent of the residents still live in rural areas. The largest city - Manchester - has a population of only 100,000. Candidates know that this state is perhaps the toughest in the nation to get interested in big-city issues.
* New Hampshire is one of the most Republican states in the nation. In fact, it is one of the few states where more voters are registered Republican than Democrat.
Since 1900, the state has backed only a handful of Democrats for the presidency. Vast areas of the state have voted Republican since the party was founded in the 1850s. Both U.S. senators, both U.S. House members and the governor are Republican. In the state House, Republicans are up by a margin of 18-6.
* Increasingly, both Republicans and Democrats in New Hampshire are more conservative than their counterparts in other states.
The Union Leader, the only statewide newspaper and perhaps the most right-wing daily in the nation, has for decades muscled New Hampshire politicians of all stripes to pledge to oppose any new taxes.
* New Hampshire remains one of the few states in the nation with no income tax and no sales tax. As a result the state lacks the resources to fund social programs and education.
Sister Dot Cormier of the Sisters of Mercy there says, ``Too often New Hampshire does not live up to even its most basic responsibilities to the poor and the disenfranchised.''
But none of this has prevented New Hampshire from influencing the national political process.
So how does New Hampshire maintain its pre-eminent position on the political calendar?
``To some extent because everyone's afraid to be the first to say, `Hey, this state isn't representative. The process shouldn't start here,''' Gans says.
With willing allies on the political right nationally, and a lazy national media that finds New Hampshire almost ideally suited to the purpose of simplifying American politics for the masses, the state has maintained a gridlock on the political process for almost half a century.
Over the years, New Hampshire has played a remarkable role in shaping the course of election campaigns - solidifying Richard Nixon's claim on the vice presidency in 1956, giving Eugene McCarthy a big enough vote in 1968 to convince Lyndon Johnson not to seek re-election, resurrecting the flagging campaigns of Ronald Reagan in '80 and George Bush in '88, and saving Bill Clinton's political hide in the midst of the Gennifer Flowers and draft-evasion controversies of 1992.
What New Hampshire does do is pull the political process to the right.
In '92 Pat Buchanan, running as an extreme right-winger to George Bush's ``mainstream'' conservative, won his best vote nationally in New Hampshire - 38 percent. Even more dysfunctional was the Democratic primary, where Paul Tsongas, the most conservative candidate, came in first, and Clinton, the second most conservative, ran second.
More progressive Democrats, Tom Harkin and Jerry Brown, did not even enter the double digits and were essentially written off by the media.
Yet less than a week later, in the neighboring state of Maine, where the Democratic Party is closer to the national mainstream, Brown bested Tsongas and Clinton.
But in the presidential sweepstakes, New Hampshire is the big ticket - so definitional that other results are dismissed.
``Journalists like New Hampshire because it's a manageable state in which to report,'' says Gans, who helped run Gene McCarthy's 1968 campaign in the state.
New Hampshire also feeds the romantic notions of American politics in which journalists like to trade. Pick up an article in any major publication about this year's primary campaign and get ready for a stream of cliches that most Americans now know by heart - ``rugged individualists,'' ``rock-ribbed conservatism,'' ``Yankee common sense,'' ``New England town-meeting tradition,'' ``New Hampshirites like to look a man in the eye before they give him their vote.''
Ohioans, Minnesotans, Texans and New Yorkers wouldn't mind looking a few presidential candidates in the eye. They just never get a chance.
As soon as the candidates leave New Hampshire, the competition begins to move so quickly - and it will move even more quickly in this front-loaded year - that most Americans never have the access New Hampshirites view as their birthright.
But America continues to accept the fantasy that New Hampshire has a corner on the market in political wisdom.
``I just wish some major candidate would skip New Hampshire, and then we'd all realize that American politics can survive without it,'' Gans says.
``All a candidate would have to say is, `Nobody ordained New Hampshire as the starting point, and I'm not going to start there.'"
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart: The road to the White House. color.by CNB