He's N.H.'s secret to primary primacy

CONCORD, N.H. -- William M. Gardner may be the single most powerful man in the nation when it comes to setting the schedule of contests that will nominate the presidential candidates of both parties next year. But you'd never know it to drop by his office on the second floor of the venerable granite State House.

For more than 30 years, his small space has been adorned with nothing more than a wall calendar, some bookcases, and a coat rack, which these days holds five sport coats on hangers should the shirtsleeved secretary of state need one for a public event. He once considered hanging a print of a George Washington portrait but decided against it.

"I wanted to be able to leave here as easily as I came in," Gardner said with a smile. However, at age 58, he has no plans to leave any time soon, which should be comforting to the political establishment of the Granite State.

Gardner has been a steely bulwark against the quadrennial machinations of other states and the two national parties seeking to poach on New Hampshire's coveted status as the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Gardner remains the keeper of the flame for New Hampshire's unique place in American politics. Under a 1975 state law, the secretary of state has the power to set the date for the state's primary to preserve that position, and he can act alone, without legislative approval.

"We've given him the tools to be able to adjust the New Hampshire date, but he's been the great carpenter, very artistic in figuring out ways to work with other states and let the powers that be know they can't move ahead," said state Representative James R. Splaine , Democrat of Portsmouth. Splaine sponsored the original bill that empowers the New Hampshire official to set the primary at least a full week before any other state's.

The 2008 dance is already underway, with Florida, in violation of both national parties' rules, recently moving its primary to Jan. 29, the same date as that of South Carolina Democrats. That may create a domino effect: South Carolina Republicans have said that to keep Florida from preempting their first-in-the-South status, they will move from Feb. 2 to an earlier date. New Hampshire, to retain the required week in between, would have to move from Jan. 22 to at least Jan. 15, which in turn, could force Iowa, the first caucus state, to move to Jan. 7 or earlier. Complicating matters further, Michigan Democrats are threatening to move their primary to whatever date New Hampshire sets.

Gardner watches and waits. He's quite adept at this drill. Since he took office in 1976, the New Hampshire primary, which traditionally was held on the state's town meeting day, the second Tuesday in March, has inexorably moved earlier in the calendar -- twice on the fourth Tuesday in February, for three cycles on the third Tuesday, then in 2000 on Feb. 1, and in 2004 on Jan. 27.

What will he do this time?

"There's a few options, but if I say how we're going to do it, well, then, [other states] will know what to do themselves," he said.

Gardner is a patient man. In the 1996 cycle, he waited until Dec. 20, 1995, to set the primary date on the following Feb. 20. Gardner's authority gives New Hampshire a big advantage over other states, where changing the primary date requires approval either by a party organization or the legislature.

Both parties have rules to punish states that move up by reducing their number of delegates to the national conventions. For Democrats, the prescribed penalty goes further -- stripping candidates of all delegates they win in scofflaw states if they have campaigned there.

A key date for Democrats is Aug. 25, when the party's rules and bylaws committee meets. If Florida holds to its current schedule, horning in on the list of early contests approved by the party, "their plan would be found in noncompliance and sanctions would be automatic," said Stacie Paxton , press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.

If New Hampshire and Iowa move up their contests, they, too, will be penalized, she said.

The threat of sanctions does not appear to have had any impact yet, however.

Gardner has played this game of chicken many times with many states and, despite periodic fears even among Granite State pols that he could provoke a backlash against New Hampshire, has always managed to win.

"Both [parties] try to roll Bill from time to time, but he's immune to them all," said Steve Duprey , a former state Republican Party chairman who served with Gardner, a Democrat, in the New Hampshire House of Representatives in the early 1970s. "He's the real deal. He doesn't get too impressed by the big guns or the national media."

"He's absolutely honest and fair, and everyone in politics trusts him," said John H. Sununu, the Republican former governor. "He loves the state and puts it first, so that everyone rallies to support him when he fights to preserve the first-in-the-nation status."

Gardner, a Manchester resident, is an unlikely icon, unfailingly modest and self-deprecating. He has never supported a candidate or attended a party function.

"I have had a very special seat here. It's provided an opportunity to get to know people of all persuasions," Gardner said. "I don't ever want to abuse that."

A critic of the pernicious influence of money in politics, Gardner sees the New Hampshire presidential primary, with its emphasis on retail campaigning and openness to any candidate who can pay the $1,000 registration fee, as a lonely holdout for the American political ideal.

Gardner has had deep bipartisan support in what was until recently a strongly Republican Leg islature, which has elected him to 16 two-year terms in a post that carries a $94,000 salary. One of his great friends in public life was Hugh Gregg , the former Republican governor, head cheerleader for the presidential primary, and founder of the New Hampshire Political Library. "Why New Hampshire?" a book by Gregg and Gardner about the primary and its colorful history, was published shortly after Gregg's death in 2003.

In the face of one Republican challenge to Gardner's reelection, Gregg and three other former GOP governors publicly endorsed the lifelong Democrat. In 1996, the Republican caucus nominated him by a 2-to-1 ratio over one of their own members. Sununu calls Gardner "America's best Democrat."

An inveterate story teller, Gardner can talk for hours about his passions -- New Hampshire history, its singular political culture, and, of course, the primary.

Strolling through the State House, he can relate in minute detail the history of the subjects of the old portraits, the artifacts, and even the furniture. The 400 leather seats in Representatives Hall? Installed in 1955, he says, stroking a cushion. The small desk in his office? Former US senator "Warren Rudman told me his father built it, as he did the desk in the governor's office, which is three times as large." The great lawyer-orator Daniel Webster, who was a congressman from New Hampshire and later a senator from Massachusetts? Defeated four times for the state Legislature and rejected by the Executive Council for attorney general of the state, Gardner said, drawing on his research of ancient, hand written records, a favored pastime.

Gardner bristles at the suggestion that the state, whose population is 96 percent white, lacks sufficient racial and ethnic diversity to warrant its leadoff influence.

"What offends me is when people say we are insensitive to certain issues because we don't look like the rest of the country," Gardner said.

New Hampshire's first primary was in 1916 and it became first in the nation four years later. Other states had primaries but dropped them in favor of caucuses that gave party leaders more control of the process, Gardner told about 90 members of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance at the group's annual dinner in Concord last month.

"No one's going to pick who's on the ballot here; it's totally open," he said. "You only have to pay your $1,000 . . . It's very important that there's a place like this where anyone can realize the American dream and run for president."