Set in Granite Inside stories from New Hampshire, frozen in time
Macomber, Shawn
t in. ramie Inside stories from New Hampshire, frozen in time. BY SHAWN MACOMBER EAR THE ALTON TRAFFIC CIRCLE, off the long wooded road between Concord and Manchester, is a large, painted sign...
...Dairy is not a huge industry here and hasn't been for some time, but old impressions refuse to skulk away...
...The shirt is included to chucelicit a knowing I kle from !VIE Hampshirites: If 1 the locals really all wore them, Alexander's wouldn't be remarkable enough to put behind a glass...
...Wesley Clark was endorsed by an Indian tribe in front of a makeshift 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004 wigwam...
...I watched all the candidates spend the summer fighting to be the guy to finish second to the doctor...
...Probably a third of the pundits, reporters, campaign staffers, and rabble rousers who flock to New Hampshire every four years relish the idea of dressing like a local...
...They are willing to take new information as it comes and change their minds on a moment's notice, as Howard Dean discovered much to his chagrin after his angry Iowa speech...
...I was the only member of the press...
...John Kerry was already boring, John Edwards was already good looking and Southern, Howard Dean was already crazed, and Dick Gephardt was already wasting his time...
...MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 23 SET IN GRANITE Within two hours the Associated Press had put Haines's name and plan on the wire for the entire world to see...
...And the press...
...THERE ARE FEW smorgasbords for political junkies as great and varied as the caravan that comes through New Hampshire during a primary year...
...A smiling wooden bull, painted in a faux Disney style, looks on...
...Sure the candidates are stooges, but they get tortured endlessly here for that...
...The myth of the rustic utopia has proved remarkably resilient...
...In New Hampshire, anyone with $1,000 and a dream can get on the ballot, and people traditionally are not shy about doing so...
...And heard he was...
...Still, New Hampshire residents put a good face on it and deal with the onslaught with a Job-like patience...
...Or how many people showed up late to work because a slow moving campaign bus was blocking the narrow streets of Portsmouth or Exeter...
...This time around 14 Republicans and 23 Democrats decided to run...
...It's hard to imagine finding that kind of star power in any other restroom in America...
...I'm going to lose, and you'd be wasting your vote...
...He was still governor of Vermont and had two burly state troopers with him scowling at anyone who so much as blinked...
...When I got back to the newsroom, my editor asked me what I thought of Dean...
...Local working stiffs shake their heads at this and go about the kind of jobs FREE that actually keeps the place running...
...In the middle of Sen...
...Of course, Lamar...
...Actual people live here continuously, election year or not...
...Within seconds a quarter of the crowd was in three inches of water...
...The Secret Service guys in the hall were on their little microphones shouting, "Watch the crowd...
...Here was Michael Moore stumping for Wesley Clark...
...Teresa Heinz Kerry held a "Latino luncheons' Lifetime, the network for shrill women, held an event to challenge the idea that the War on Terrorism was a bigger issue than domestic violence...
...Democrat Robert Linnell, an 81-year-old World War II veteran, got to the touching heart of what makes the New Hampshire primary great with his speech...
...Because we don't tolerate sissies here in the Granite State, and you better be ready to deal with whatever comes your way if you want our vote...
...It is not rare to meet people at town hall meetings who have seen every candidate two or three times...
...On his way out the governor handed me a "Dean for America" pamphlet...
...This humble scribe was positioned at a urinal in a Manchester bathroom at one point with Tim Russert to one side and David Broder on the other, chatting over me...
...Supporters of various candidates, signs waving, bickered loudly, and tried out chants...
...At more than 400 members, the New Hampshire Legislature is the fourth-largest legislative body in the world...
...Occasionally, candidates for state office come along and call for a more "progressive" tax system, and voters, Democrats and Republicans, opt for progress, of a sort, by turning them out of office...
...Several thousand anti-government activists in the Free State Project voted last year to move here in the hope of making the state even more libertarian than it already is...
...Out-of-staters cannot resist the gaze of this signboard...
...Dennis Kucinich held a rally with fire walkers and graffiti artists...
...A local black preacher accused Howard Dean of "pimping" the black community because he only visited the church and didn't sit through the service...
...Too crazy" I then spent the next year watching in disbelief as "sure thing" Kerry floundered and spoke to dwindling crowds while this brutish little man became the media's darling and subsequently rose sharply in the John Kerry was already boring, John Edwards was already good looking and Southern, Howard Dean was already crazed...
...His face turned red...
...By midmorning there is a line of cars pulled over, and people trudging through snow and mud to the sign to have their pictures taken with it...
...The closer the race got, the stranger it became...
...There are plenty of locals to campaign for...
...In the final days before an election, the streets take on the flavor of a carnival...
...The people of New Hampshire are deadly serious about the role they are playing in the political process...
...Bush demanded his limousine pull over so he could shake hands with a cow...
...Until the very day of the election, a significant number of voters remain undecided...
...I just want the chance to be heard...
...PERHAPS WHAT EXEMPLIFIES this dedication more than anything else was the turnout on primary day for the Republicans...
...I typed out thousands upon thousands of words on the ups and downs of the campaign...
...The first primary was originally scheduled for May of 1916, but was moved up to March 2, the state's traditional town meeting day...
...Locals just have to deal with candidates and their entourages showing up unannounced...
...Carl Cameron kept to himself down at the end...
...In every primary election cycle, like paranoiacs who spend their lives staking out Roswell for extraterrestrials, out-of-state big city media types scour the Granite State for any signs of farm life forms...
...Mary Steenburgen, Ted Danson's wife, was here ostensibly to promote General Clark, but spent most of her time talking up her television show, Joan of Arcadia...
...Shawn Macomber, a New Hampshire native, is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...It would be impossible to tally the number of perfectly fine meals in small diners that have been wrecked by some senator showing up with 15 staffers, 10 reporters, and a television crew...
...He was campaigning for a state senate candidate, and had drawn a crowd of exactly three, including myself...
...Often, more than1,000 people come out in 20 below weather to see even minor candidates speak...
...I asked, before being treated to the first of many Dean tirades...
...But they are not the only ones affected...
...He's not going anywhere," I said...
...Watch the crowd...
...So you are running...
...SHAWN MACOMBER polls...
...Martin Sheen visited elementary schools for Howard Dean...
...At some point, I began to wonder if a worm hole had opened up in Hollywood and was dropping stars and starlets into the state...
...George W. Bush, facing only token opposition, still received upwards of 50,000 votes on a freezing cold day...
...THE FIRST IN THE NATION primary is a much longer process than one might imagine...
...Out of state, people frequently ask me if the license plates still say "Live Free or Die...
...MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 25...
...was far from the only one...
...It wouldn't be much of a jump...
...This stubbornness bleeds over into today's primary...
...And a week after Dean's post-Iowa meltdown blew out a couple pistons in his frontrunner engine, I was at Kerry's victory party watching him celebrate a 13-point drubbing of Dean...
...The dirty hippies who worked for Lyndon LaRouche disrupted events and passed out copies of their voter's guide to the 2004 election: "Children of Satan II...
...BY SHAWN MACOMBER EAR THE ALTON TRAFFIC CIRCLE, off the long wooded road between Concord and Manchester, is a large, painted sign that reads "Welcome to Cow Hampshire...
...Granite Staters are stubbornly independent in a way that can be difficult for outsiders to comprehend...
...He claimed the media "always" misquoted him, and blustered a few minutes more before heading out...
...Nobody talked about winning anymore...
...And you know why...
...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004 SHAWN MACOMBER There are buttons, flyers, and signs from campaigns long since forgotten...
...I...did...NOT SAY THAT," he said through clenched teeth...
...If you get around New Hampshire early enough, the major themes of the election are already in play...
...1 VERYONE TENDS to think about the primary in terms of whose .Apolitical career will take off and whose will crash and burn...
...The New York Times plastered it on the front page gleefully, but New Hampshire voters seemed less impressed and nearly gave Pat Buchanan an upset victory over the sitting president...
...Newscasters deliver the lines with a smirk...
...With the intense media focus on this small state, even a forum for "lesser known candidates" can result in national exposure...
...We don't tolerate sissies here in the Granite State, and you better be ready to deal with whatever comes your way if you want our vote...
...One of the most exciting moments of the campaign actually came during the New Hampshire GOP's "Kickoff to Victory" celebration at the Wayfarer hotel in Bedford a week before the primary...
...Drew Barrymore was in town, filming a "campaign documentary" at a Catholic high school in Dover...
...OR SUCH A SMALL, OFTEN FROZEN NEW ENGLAND state, New Hampshire is quite the popular destination...
...They combined the events to save cash, subzero temperatures be damned...
...To the contrary, the New Hampshire primary is a rejuvenating experience...
...Seeking to eliminate the influence of party power brokers in choosing nominees, the legislature substituted a primary for the usual caucus to give citizens a more direct role in the process...
...John Sununu's address, the heat set off the sprinkler with a tremendous boom...
...Don't vote for me," he said...
...More than anything else, people ask over and over again, "Doesn't spending so much time with these candidates make you cynical...
...They were not there for naught...
...On the campaign trail in '92, George H.W...
...When I washed my hands, Wolf Blitzer was at the other sink...
...I began covering the campaign a year and a half before the first ballot was cast, when I caught up with Dean in an Exeter hospital room...
...In the weeks leading up to the primary, Republican luminaries such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani, and New York Governor George Pataki all came to stump for Bush...
...In addition to the politicians and the press, who come for the first-in-the-nation primary, people emigrate in decent numbers from nearby states, usually for the lower taxes (no sales and no state income tax...
...The state's leaders decided it would be wasteful to light the town halls twice...
...For most, that painted piece of wood will be the closest these people get to a cow in New Hampshire...
...All the major Democratic candidates were out in force by the 2002 midterm elections, mostly stumping for local candidates in hopes of eventual endorsements...
...There was, of course, no way New Hampshire's statesmen of yore could have known how strange and influential their presidential primary would become...
...It's hard to find any candidate with a real horror story about locals causing trouble, although Wesley Clark did draw the ire of the crucial voting block when he showed up at a bowling alley on league night and took up all the lanes...
...The New Hampshire primary this year had plenty for those who aren't interested in politics as such...
...In the state's capital, Concord, there is a museum that houses artifacts from primary circuses of years past...
...They show up at events and congratulate one another on their new, still-creased-from-the-cardboard Sears flannel shirts and the thick rubber boots they just can't wait to get muddy...
...Where else can eccentrics who endorse the colonization of Mars or the building of wind power platforms in the ocean to impede fishing—"the murder of the high seas"—be heard by so many...
...Look at this basic fact: None of the self-proclaimed experts ever knows what will happen here...
...tve The city slickers' rustic self-delusions go beyond the cows...
...Unbeknownst to the crowd, the C- Span crew, who, with their skull T-shirts and leather wristbands, looked better suited to a mosh pit than a political event, had set up the hot white lights for their camera directly under the hotel's pressurized sprinkler system...
...Potential 2008 presidential hopeful Bill Frist dutifully got up and gave his speech under flickering lights without any complaint whatsoever...
...Consider Robert Haines, a Republican candidate, who showed up at the minor candidates' forum in a fuzzy gray American flag parka and cowboy hat...
...On primary night, a pseudo-gospel group in golden robes set up in front of the CNN bus and sang nonsensical ditties about fields and flying...
...From the time the midterm election campaigns begin in earnest, the state lives under a deluge of stump speeches and photo-ops that the national media cover only in the most cursory way...
...One exhibit of particular interest is Lamar Alexander's trademark red and black checkered flannel shirts...
...Occasionally, television crews set up and do broadcasts from in front of it...
...But the show went on...
...Many of these essays were written while I was incarcerated," he explained to the crowd while his two elementary school-age children, or his "staffers" as he described them, passed out copies of his self-published plan to fix America...
...Yes they do, I tell them, and we mean it...
Vol. 37 • March 2004 • No. 2
