Correspondents' Correspondence Portentous Picnic
POKORNY, BRAD
Correspondents' corresponaence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Portentous Picnic Nashua, N.H.—Last month's Hills-boro...
...At the picnic, a number of Brown button-wearers confided: "I'm for Brown...
...As State Representative and Brown supporter Robert Plourde puts it: "No one can [campaign] better than the candidate himself...
...Yet even if Brown is off to a slow start, he is far from out of the race...
...Brown was the "star" of the picnic —a good old-fashioned political outing with hot dogs, hamburgers, corn-on-the-cob, beer, and a country-western band...
...Maybe we'll have a candidate after all...
...And for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the day augered victory in the country's initial primary next February 26...
...Brown will probably spend the most time here in person?about five or six days a month alter October, when he is expected to announce his Presidential candidacy...
...For once he is attacked on the issues and branded as a big-spending liberal, they claim, his support will quickly unravel in fiscally conservative New Hampshire...
...I hope to goodness nothing happens to him, I really do...
...This was further confirmed by a Boston Globe poll taken in New Hampshire last month: As a write-in candidate, the Massachusetts Senator ran ahead of Carter by 58-28 per cent, with Brown at 11 per cent...
...His anti-nuclear stance is likely to woo Democrats opposed to the completion of the Seabrook nuclear power station, the focus of the powerful Clamshell Alliance and of the entire "no-nuke" movement in the Northeast...
...Last November two incumbents who did well in the pre-election polls, Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson and Democratic Senator Thomas Mclntyre, were hit in the closing weeks of the campaign by snappy and powerful advertising beamed into the densely populated southern portion of the state via Boston television...
...That Kennedy's appeal is wide and growing wider was apparent from his many loud supporters at the picnic...
...Most of the supporters had been bussed in from Boston, complete with preprinted placards and identical campaign buttons...
...as an officially declared candidate, Kennedy's edge increased to 68-20 over Carter...
...The prospect does not faze the other camps...
...This would be a new factor in New Hampshire Presidential primaries, and it could produce some surprises.—Brad Pokorny...
...Both men lost...
...To begin with, it is not too late to build an organization...
...The White House hopefuls are mindful of those upsets and have indicated that they will significantly step up their TV advertising...
...If he does run, I wish him all the luck in the world...
...The news-wire photographers and network cameramen took off their lens caps, and TV screens around the country carried the image of a charismatic young candidate mobbed by enthusiastic New Hampshire supporters...
...New Hampshire still has no sales or income tax, and its constitution specifically outlaws a budget deficit...
...And to make sure the voters will know who is responsible for their skyrocketing utility bills, John Durkin, the state's popular Democratic Senator, is waging a one-man crusade against the President's decontrol policy...
...But if Kennedy came into the race, I'd have second thoughts...
...We never, ever dared hope he'd enter before the primary," said Dudley W. Dudley, the head of the Kennedy write-in movement in the state...
...In their view, this would be the last preliminary step to a formal announcement that he is running...
...For California Governor Jerry Brown, the only one of the Big Three contenders present in the flesh, the day was all Hollywood—a harbinger of the media-oriented campaign that he is likely to run...
...Indeed, Carter is so vulnerable that Chris Brown, his local campaign manager, concedes the President might lose in a three-way competition—surprising pessimism when one considers his impressive 1976 primary victory...
...Similarly, his ba-lance-the-Federal-budget theme, reflecting his streak of fiscal conservatism, promises to attract a strong following in a state proud of its austere budgets...
...Finally, Brown's two most visible issues have considerable appeal here...
...A Brown anti-nuclear remark at the picnic drew the most sustained and widespread applause of the day...
...Besides providing the other political camps with fodder for quips about "hiring extras from central casting" and "excitement on cue," the imported enthusiasm underscored Brown's lack of organized support in this state...
...In any case, the Senator's boosters are excited by his September 20 disclosure that "sometime in early November" he intended to form an exploratory committee for a Presidential campaign...
...For President Jimmy Carter, there was a subtle aroma of defeat wafting through the crisp, pre-fall air...
...For President Carter, meanwhile, the roads in New Hampshire, as elsewhere, all seem to be going downhill...
...But this spontaneous demonstration had one flaw—it was staged...
...Portentous Picnic Nashua, N.H.—Last month's Hills-boro County Democratic Picnic?the opening shot in New Hampshire's Presidential primary contest—was laden with portent...
...Any such hammering away at the profligate theme will probably be an Hth-hour attack, unanswerable and therefore highly effective...
...Hillsboro marked only his second visit to New Hampshire (during his first, last April, the state's pro-Carter Democratic leadership embarrassed him out of testifying in favor of a Federal balanced budget amendment), and no local people worked for the Governor during the summer...
...More concretely, high home heating oil prices and other energy problems are expected to hurt Carter badly in these parts this winter...
...Second, of the three major candidates...
...Greater visibility will increase his chances immensely, for this small state's half a million voters like and expect to see their candidates up close...
...We want Brown...
...As he made his entrance onto the grounds, he was greeted by a bone-crushing mass of sign-carrying supporters, all chanting "We want Brown...
...Just the opposite in fact...
...Carter and Brown organizers say they would welcome the Senator's formally entering the race...
...In fact, the scene would have seemed heavy-handed even in a pulp novel...
...That stunned the crowd of about 1,000 Democrats and 200 reporters and even drew scattered boos, not to mention the subsequent national media attention...
...It was at the Hillsboro picnic, for example, that his mother, Miss Lillian, committed her now-famous gaffe when she said about a possible Kennedy candidacy...
Vol. 62 • October 1979 • No. 19
