Stateside With Rosalea: Up North For A While

Here in Washington DC on Labor Day Monday, a cartoon in this morning’s Washington Times says it all. In Grand Avenue, by Steve Breen, a mother and child are sitting at a dining table, and the mother is saying, “Labor Day is the unofficial end of the summer and a day of rest.” “Rest for what?” asks the child. “The unofficial start of the campaign season,” says Mom.

Well, that used to be the case, but this time around the campaigning for who will be the 2008 presidential candidates began a couple of months ago. In search of just why the first-in-the-nation presidential primary—traditionally held in New Hampshire—is so important, I spent a week in the North Country of the granite state, starting off by interviewing folks at the local farmer’s market in the town of Littleton.

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[The Littleton Grist Mill with the Amonoosuc River, which powers its waterwheel, in the background. Across the river, is the Sunday farmers’ market.]

::Chris and Elizabeth Allen::

How does the primary work and why is it early?
Chris: I think it started in the ’50s. How we became first I don’t really know, but we’re adamant about keeping it first, so we actually have a law here that says that our primary has to be a week before any other primary, and not counting the Iowa caucus, which is not a primary. That’s a different thing.

Our primary is, everybody gets to go and vote and we do the Republican, Democrat primary on the same day, which some states don’t do. When we go in, we can… I’m an independent. I can go in and declare when I walk in the door that I’m a Republican; get a Republican ballot if I choose to vote in that primary, for that party. It’s one or the other. Then when I leave I can go back to being an independent.

And that’s what a lot of people don’t like—that we can do that. Because, if there’s not really a race in one party or the other, then everyone would tend to go to the primary, and for that one five minutes you can be whatever party you want to be. And then, we have a lot of independents here so it’s hard to track everybody here. You can’t say, Well, a certain percentage is Republican and a certain percentage is Democrat. I mean, there are, because there’s people that are adamant about being in a party, but there’s a lot of us that are independent.

When will you know what date your primary will be held?
It’s a mixing bowl right now. But the [NH] Secretary of State has to follow the [state] law. And the Iowa caucus has to be a week before our primary.

I don’t see much in the news about the candidates visiting up here in the North Country; they all seem to go south.
That’s where everybody lives. So, for their bang for the buck, to come here and hit a few spots, they’re way better off down there, and there’s also more Democrats concentrated down there. There’s a lot of Democrats in northern NH, but they’re all so spread out.

And when the candidates come to northern NH, they’re usually in a bus and they’ll stop anywhere. They might have a couple of places planned, but if they just see anything on the side of the road… John McCain was here during maple sugar season, and we were at a little tiny sugar house and he had been there that day. So, they just see something and they pull in if it’s a good photo-op. They like to photo-op, you know.

We don’t see many up here. Littleton is a town they might come to. This is a huge town for northern NH. A lot of Vermonters come here and shop because we have big stores and no sales tax. They also come here to work, because there’s more opportunity here for jobs.

Here in New Hampshire there seems to be this way where everybody gets together and decides things.
Totally. It’s called home rule. Nothing gets shoved down our throat. The towns have the final say on things. Like if a big company wanted to come here to Littleton and people were against it, it would come to a vote and the people would decide. Now, when I was in Alaska, Alaskans were for anything that created a job. But here, we don’t have that problem, we have low unemployment and we want to keep NH kind of … specially up here. Cos they’ve already ruined southern NH. It’s overcrowded and they have traffic problems and we don’t have that up here. Except on weekends, when they all come up here!

What would you expect to see on the ballot and how physically do you vote?
Paper ballot. There’s a lot of people that you see on TV and in the news that are running in the primary, but there are dozens here in NH because it’s very cheap here. It only costs, I think, about $1000 and then you’re in. And you don’t have to campaign at all if you don’t want to, but you’re on the ballot. So there’ll be a lot of names on this ballot. And there’ll be some names you never heard of. There’ll be independent, Libertarian, all kinds of people.

We like the attention that we get from the primary. They say it’s not a lot of money, but I think they’re wrong. I think a lot of money is generated here. Especially this primary, which started right after Bush won the last election. That’s when people started showing up here. They’d not declared then, but why were all these politicians showing up in NH from these other states? It’s to get name recognition, and then they might drop the whole idea. Some of them have been coming back over and over and over. We ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s really going to get into a frenzy here in the wintertime.

Do you strive to go and see people? How do you make your judgment?
I’d have to go quite a ways to see people. So I don’t care about that part. We watch New Hampshire news and we see it all the time. We see it all the time. I haven’t really made up my mind yet because I think something will happen between now and then. Somebody will shoot themselves in the foot. But it’s really close right now. And the Democrats are very close; Republicans it’s hard to say. Mitt Romney—he was the governor of Massachusetts, neighbouring state—he’s probably not going to do as well as he might have if he was from Massachusetts and a Democrat, let’s say.

Sometimes it’s a done deal here, but there’s been some surprises over the years. Like Clinton. Clinton loves NH because he lost in Iowa and then turned around and won in NH, so that was a big deal. And then there’s that week before there’s another primary, so there’s a lot of scrambling …

Elizabeth: Most Americans act like lemmings. Whatever the neighbour says to do, they’re gonna do. People don’t think for themselves. I usually wait till it comes down to brass tacks, because I think the politicians say what the people want to hear that they’re talking to. One day, they’re left; the next day, they’re right. Or black and white. So I usually wait till it’s pretty much right near the end.

In November is it the same?
Elizabeth: Then it’s down to one or the other. But even after they get into office, they don’t follow through.

Chris: It’s frustrating only having two major parties here, because it doesn’t really seem like democracy when you don’t have that third or fourth choice. Which we do, but it’s not for real.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And when Bush got elected this last time, with all the scandal in Florida and his relative being in the government down there, you wonder if it’s even worth it. You know? It’s more like monarchy than democrats.

::Angel::

You were saying you don’t vote. What’s the story?
I vote usually for the presidential, but I don’t pay any attention to the primaries or any of the process up to that. I think that we have a one-party system. That the Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin, so it doesn’t really matter, I don’t think.

Would you like to see more, viable parties?
Well, yeah, I think that would be great. I don’t think that that’s possible. But yeah. I just think that our political system is a very entrenched thing. It’s been going on for a very long time. It would be like changing the rotation of the Earth to try to change the structure of our political system in our country.

Is it more important to pay attention to Congressional candidates and local politicians rather than the primary?
I think we would see more direct response at a local level. You get more change effected locally, I think, than we do at a national level. I think New Hampshire, it’s pretty shiny every four years because our primaries are so very important. So it definitely becomes a stomping ground for anyone who wants your vote for the presidential, and handshakes and the meet and the greets and baby-hugging and all of that. Because our state can make or break their campaign. So THEY see it as a very important thing; myself I don’t.

You’re voting for the lesser of two evils. In a one-party system, it doesn’t really matter at all.

::Jim Gunderson::

You live in New Hampshire and you’ve been participating in the NH primaries for some time?
Yes, I have. Probably about the last 20 years.

What do you think about Florida and everybody leapfrogging to hold their primary elections ahead of NH?
I just wish it would all stay the same as what it was. NH was first and should stay first in the primaries. Everybody’s just trying to get ahead. The primaries are being moved up. The activity’s too far in advance now. Two years out is way too early.

Why should it stay first?
It’s sort of tradition. NH always was the first state to vote in the primaries, and we’ve had that tradition for years. We’ve been looked at as a guiding light for it, and I wish it would stay that way.

What’s the advantage of it being first?
There’s no advantage other than we get all the politicians coming here first, talking to us.

How do you feel about people registered as independents being able to ask for whatever ballot they like?
I’m registered Republican. I don’t think I’ve ever voted Democrat, so I’ll always vote Republican.

Have you had the opportunity personally to go and see any of the candidates at any of the elections?
No. The ones that have been here, when they’ve been in town, I haven’t been in town. So I haven’t been able to. And truthfully, the only one I would go and see is John McCain. I like his stance. You know, even though a lot of the American people are against the war in Iraq, he is willing to take a stance that we need to continue to be there to clean up the mess we’ve started, and I like that in him.

He knows that it’s hurting him politically to take that stance. He believes it and he’s taking a stance. Right or wrong. He’s not doing it for political gain. He’s doing it because that’s what he believes. So I stand behind him for that.

Should the mess have ever been created?
Well, we definitely created a mess, and I don’t think we should pull out of there till we clean it up now. If we left out of there now, there’d just be mass destruction every kind of way. We have to stick it, right or wrong, we have to stick it out, now, I think. I think all the politicians up there running their mouths right now saying We oughta pull out, we oughta pull out, are doing it just for political gain and it’s actually hurting our soldiers and hurting our cause. Cos it just feeds to the terrorist activities even more when we do that.

::About Littleton and New Hampshire::

Besides being the site for the 1941 world premiere of Bette Davis’ film The Great Lie, Littleton was the birthplace and childhood home of the woman who created that icon of sunny optimism, Pollyanna. Littleton is on the northwestern side of the White Mountains (so-named because they were often mistaken for white clouds by early mariners). A 1992 study showed that tourists spend $2.238 billion in the White Mountains, according to a local school textbook.

Littleton has an estimated population of 6,162 as at July 2006; New Hampshire’s population estimate at the same date is 1,314,895. NH has the third largest legislative body in the world, after Great Britain and the US Congress. The General Court, as it is known, has 400 members, paid only meager expenses and $200 every two years. That is, there is one state legislator for every 1800 voters.

According to the NH Secretary of State’s website, the numbers registered Democrat, Republican, and Undeclared (what Chris refers to as independent) for the 2006 election (not a presidential election year) were as follows:
Democratic, 216,736
Republican, 253,736
Undeclared, 356,897
The number of Undeclared voting Republican, 11,755
The number of Undeclared voting Democrat, 12,358

According to the late veteran campaign journalist Theodore H. White, the tradition of New Hampshire holding the first-in-the-nation primary is the result of its local elections being held during the “mud season” between the end of the snowy winters and the beginning of the busy farming season. In 1949, a local legislator sought to “spice up” those first Tuesday in March elections by including a presidential candidate preference.

Eisenhower won that first NH Republican primary in 1952 and also the general election in 1952, starting an unbroken run of NH primary winners being successful in the November elections, the notable exception being Bill Clinton in 1992. Contrary to popular belief he didn’t win the NH primary that year, but lost to Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts who later withdrew his candidacy.

What do the primary elections in each state decide? They decide which candidate the individual states’ delegates to the party’s national nominating convention will vote for. However, both Democratic and Republican party leaderships are threatening to deny delegates voting rights at the nominating conventions if their parties don’t stick to the previously approved calendar, sticking to the original dates. Which means that New Hampshire’s law making it first in the nation essentially hog-ties its primary into being worthless if other states keep forcing it to make its primary date earlier.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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