Why the N.H. primary is still a solid bellwether
("Stormy Weather: The New Hampshire Primary and Presidential Politics": By Dante J. Scala; Palgrave Macmillan; 218 pp., $29.95.)
Last month, the US Supreme Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Political reporters agreed that Congress had passed that law after years of stalling because of the stature Senator John McCain had wrung from his 2000 presidential campaign. That campaign hit turbo drive when the Arizona Republican walked away with the New Hampshire primary.
This was far from the first time the nation's ninth-smallest state had used its leadoff primary to sculpt the profile of history. Two presidents, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, declined to seek reelection after cratering in New Hampshire (Johnson had a humiliatingly close call; Truman lost the 1952 primary). Two more, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, began their political dominance by triumphing in the primary. Indeed, the cliche for years went that no one had been elected president without first winning New Hampshire.
Bill Clinton shattered that conceit when he lost the primary in 1992 but still took the White House. George W. Bush did it again. Is the New Hampshire crystal ball permanently cracked? No, says Dante J. Scala, a political scientist at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., who has written a useful if schizophrenic book about this idiosyncratic icon of American politics.
Part academic analysis, part field report on past (mostly Democratic) campaigns, the book comes alive when campaign workers share war stories. Jimmy Carter allowed plain-folks volunteers to drive him around the state and bonded with them. He won the 1976 primary. In 1984, Walter Mondale relied on Secret Service chauffeurs. He had less contact with average people, and he learned on primary day how deep was their love, which was not very. (Gary Hart obliterated him.)
Dry as the academic part of "Stormy Weather" is, it contains insights that make the book a worthwhile read for political junkies. Brandishing demographic data, Scala says state Democrats split into two blocs: educated, reform-minded voters in college towns and Concord, the seat of state government, and working-class folks in rural hamlets and industrial cities such as Manchester. Candidates who drew support from both camps demonstrated coalition-building skills that typically carried them to the Democratic nomination, even if they lost New Hampshire. Clinton and Bush may have demolished the gotta-win-here ethos, but the primary still has predictive value, if only we peer beneath the winner-loser outcome to see the makeup of a candidate's base.
"With the exception of [George] McGovern in 1972, no candidate whose appeal was disproportionally high among the elite went on to win the party nomination," writes Scala. "In contrast, candidates who succeeded in appealing to both elite and working-class Democrats may not have won New Hampshire, but their balanced performance was more likely to augur success in subsequent primaries."
Scala skips the main controversy about the primary: Should the road to the White House wind through the granite hills, seacoast honky-tonks, yuppie suburbs, and old mill towns of such a small, mostly white, unrepresentative place? That debate will endure as long as the primary, so perhaps Scala was wise to sidestep it.
New Hampshire votes again Jan. 27. Look for the candidate who wins the votes of both the tofu-munching professor and the hard hat downing a burger. You may get an early peek at this year's Democratic nominee.
