Rooted in history
Candidate for N.H. Senate has an inherited presidential example to run by
TAMWORTH, N.H. -- George Cleveland would be conspicuous in any small New England town, a bear-like man of aristocratic posture, fond of Hawaiian shirts, who seems to greet everyone with an engaging smile and a thinking-man's joke.
He's also known for posing nude in a calendar featuring ``The Men of Tamworth," and he's logged time as a clown, an auctioneer, and town moderator for 28 years.
But Cleveland, 54, will be the first to acknowledge, somewhat wearily, that perhaps he's best known as the grandson of President Grover Cleveland, an obscure chief executive whose footnote in American history is that he is the only president to have served two nonconsecutive terms.
Now, Cleveland is running for state senator as a Democrat, embarking on a real-life campaign instead of pounding a lectern in the tub-thumping impersonations he does of his grandfather, who was elected president in 1884, lost in 1888, and elected again in 1892.
Cleveland admits he doesn't have a detailed message yet, doesn't have a campaign plan, and even his opponent says he doesn't have a clue about Cleveland's political agenda.
``I don't know where he stands," said Senator Joseph Kenney, a two-term Republican incumbent from Wakefield. ``But I'm the grandson of a farmer."
Although Cleveland's platform is evolving, he says he could do worse than emulate the ethics and honesty for which his grandfather was known in an era of party bosses, robber barons, and political corruption.
Family marriage to younger women helps explain why the president, born in 1837, still has grandchildren living 169 years later. President Grover Cleveland, at age 49, married a 21-year-old woman in 1886 who had been his ward. Then, George's father, Richard Cleveland, in his mid-40s, married a much-younger woman who had taught the children from Richard's first marriage.
``It's sort of like, `I'm my own Grandpa,' " George Cleveland says.
Although Grover Cleveland was born in New Jersey, became mayor of Buffalo, and then governor of New York on his way to the White House, perhaps nowhere is the family heritage more entrenched than in this tiny village near the White Mountains. A summer home bought in 1903 by the former president sits off Cleveland Hill Road, the summer theater here was launched by the president's son, and the Cleveland name is sprinkled throughout the town's 2,500 residents.
``I love it here, always have," says Cleveland, who was raised in Baltimore, summered in Tamworth, and moved here full time in 1973. ``I never wanted to leave, so I didn't."
Before purchasing a house in Tamworth, the president had maintained a summer home in Bourne, Mass. That home, Gray Gables, burned in 1973.
But here, from the porch outside The Olde Village Store to the pub at Tamworth Inn, nearly everyone seems to know that Cleveland is carrying a former president's genes. But few people here know much about his ancestor with the 56-inch waist.
In 1884, however, Cleveland's name became a household word when supporters of his Republican opponent, former Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, attacked Cleveland's character by circulating rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate child and abandoned the mother. In one of the most famous slogans in presidential campaign history, the Blaine camp coined the rhyme: ``Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"
The Democrats, highlighting Blaine's denials that he had been corrupted by railroad interests, countered with: ``Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine."
George Cleveland said he has met Blaine's great-great-great-grandson, a
Cleveland's marquee appearance as his grandfather occurs each year at the Carroll County Democrats' annual Grover Cleveland Dinner.
Despite his depth of knowledge about the president, he seems matter-of-fact about the relationship.
``It's just not a lot different from being the grandson of anyone else's grandfather," Cleveland says. ``There's no clout. You still have to pay taxes and buy stamps."
Cleveland says a large portrait of his grandfather, now in the Smithsonian Institution, hung in the family home when he was a child. But other than that reminder, Cleveland says, he didn't study the president's career extensively until the early 1990s. Then, the rambling words of a straight-talking president whose reputation was forged by a commitment to tough-minded fairness made a lasting impression on his grandson.
Grover Cleveland bucked the Democratic machine of Tammany Hall as New York governor, overhauled the Civil Service as president by insisting on merit rather than patronage in hiring, and opposed the US annexation of Hawaii as an imperialistic adventure.
Cleveland was defeated for reelection in 1888, even though he had won the popular vote, because Benjamin Harrison amassed more electoral votes. After Cleveland returned to the White House in 1892, the Depression of 1893 and his antilabor stance in an ensuing railroad strike helped erode his support.
Now, his grandson is wading into state politics, compelled by what he calls a ``cosmic nudge" to replace a friend, Mark Hounsell, who dropped out as the Democrats' choice because of health concerns. Cleveland said one of his top campaign issues will be what he describes as the state's over-reliance on the property tax.
If elected, Cleveland plans to resign as executive director of the Gibson Center for Senior Services, a nonprofit group that provides meals, transportation, and other assistance to the elderly in northern Carroll County.
No matter the election result, Cleveland said, ``if I can be as honest and ethical as Grover was, I'll be OK by 2006 standards."
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com. 