Scrapping for an edge in N.H.
Months before vote, Democratic push is on
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Most visitors looking at a map of New Hampshire see distinct regions built around recreation and geography: the resorts and ski runs of the White Mountains, the tiny but festive seacoast, the woods and hiking trails of the North Country.
When Erik Greathouse looks at a map of New Hampshire, he takes an entirely different view. He's intrigued by the city wards of Manchester. He's captivated by hardscrabble mill towns like Berlin. He's attracted to blue-collar areas in and around Rochester.
Greathouse serves as New Hampshire campaign manager for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Like his counterparts for the other Democratic contenders, he is looking at New Hampshire this fall not for foliage or saltwater taffy, but for the roughly 50,000 votes it will take to have his candidate win the state's presidential primary in January.
In Gephardt's case, that means not only trying to corral voters in Democratic strongholds, such as Manchester, but making the effort for as few as 2,000 votes in smaller communities up north.
"Here you are running for the highest office in the land, and the campaign tactics are what you would use in the lowest-level race -- because of the importance of the state," Greathouse said last week from Gephardt's headquarters, where wall-sized charts track door-knocking, leafleting, and house-party activity.
It's still more than 100 days before primary voters go to the polls, but from villages along the Canadian border to sprawling bedroom communities north of Boston, presidential candidates and armies of political operatives are buzzing the state in their quadrennial quest. A win, place, or show in New Hampshire could provide crucial momentum in the January/February sprint to determine the Democratic presidential nominee.
The challenge is connecting with voters in a world with wireless offices, children's soccer leagues, and 200-channel cable TV. Plus one additional distraction this fall.
"I think they're watching the Red Sox and the Yankees," said former governor Jeanne Shaheen, who recently signed on as national chairwoman of Senator John F. Kerry's campaign.
Among those who are paying attention, the surge of support that had been building behind Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, appears to have been reined in by the late entry of retired Army General Wesley K. Clark of Arkansas. Kerry, like Dean a favorite because he is a New England candidate, is about 10 points behind Dean but is in the midst of a five-day swing through the state -- his most concerted effort yet.
Meanwhile, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut continues to hover at about 5 percent in the polls, while Senator John Edwards of North Carolina is mired at 3 percent, despite outspending the field with $400,000 worth of ads at the state's largest television station, WMUR in Manchester.
"Senator Edwards is spending more time here, but his campaign doesn't seem to be taking hold here for some reason," said Mayor Robert A. Baines of Manchester, who plans to endorse a Democrat.
The remaining candidates, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, former senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, have paid relatively little attention to New Hampshire. Sharpton and Moseley Braun have not been in the state since February, while Kucinich has made seven visits, according to Democracy in Action, a public interest website that tracks candidate activity.
Meanwhile, President Bush, who visited the state last week, may be facing eroding popularity in national polls, but among New Hampshirites he remains marginally more popular, thanks in part to an economy that has remained stronger in the state than on the national level.
A survey last month by American Research Group, a Manchester-based organization, suggested that the president has a 48 percent unfavorability rating nationwide, the worst of his presidency. In New Hampshire, Bush had a 51 percent favorable rating and an unfavorable rating of 43.
Every campaign manager is arguing that Bush is vulnerable, but the Democratic primary race remains an open book whose final chapter is only now being written.
"I don't think you can really write anybody off," said Karen Hicks, Dean's state campaign manager. "There's over 100 days left before the primary, and a lot can happen in over 100 days."
In pursuit of votes, campaign strategists are engaging in a blend of modern-day cartography and old-fashioned stumping.
Shaheen and Ken Robinson, who manages Kerry's New Hampshire campaign, are focusing on a quadrant south of Concord and east of Manchester, where about 60 percent of the state's active voters live.
Other campaigns are mining the territory as well, but the Kerry operatives are especially hopeful, because the senator lives across the border, and many southern New Hampshire residents are Massachusetts transplants. The Boston media market also bleeds into the region, which may explain why Kerry has spent more than $400,000 on advertising at Boston TV stations, the most of any candidate.
"But we're not going to cede any part of the state," Shaheen said. "I believe John Kerry has an appeal across the spectrum."
Dean is targeting the Connecticut River Valley, the Upper Valley, and other areas in western New Hampshire that border his home state. That region is home not only to some of the state's most liberal voters, but it also gets some spillover from the Vermont media.
Lieberman is working a bit of each area, hoping to tap into the more conservative voters whose hawkish, fiscally restrained beliefs dovetail with his own. He is targeting in southern New Hampshire the numerous independent voters, who averaged about 35 percent of the registered electorate in Hillsborough, Rockingham, and Strafford counties during the 2000 presidential race.
"We are not, at this point, attracting the attention in the liberal elite bastions of the Upper Valley," said Peter Greenberger, Lieberman's state director. "Our voters form a good coalition -- independents from down south; ethnic and lower economic strata Democrats in Berlin, Strafford County; traditional Democrats from Manchester."
Edwards is working much the same turf, for many of the same reasons. His staff is not disheartened by his lack of progress.
"The New Hampshire primary is famous for choosing candidates who are not as well known six months out from the election but spend a lot of time working here in the last few weeks," said Colin Van Ostern, Edwards's New Hampshire spokesman.
Gephardt is hoping to build off a victory in the Iowa caucuses, which occur eight days before the Granite State's primary, by pulling 2,000 or so votes out of the North Country mill towns. While that may seem like an insignificant number in a country of more than 250 million people, Gephardt and his rivals are well aware of the megaphone effect of New Hampshire's vote: It sends a loud message about electability.
"Fairly or unfairly, rightly or wrongly, from those two contests [the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary], a conventional wisdom emerges as to who has appeal and who doesn't have appeal," said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst in Washington.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. 