Clark, Lieberman boost N.H. effort
DURHAM, N.H. -- Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and retired Army General Wesley K. Clark said yesterday that they were expanding their presidential campaigns in New Hampshire after announcing they will not compete in the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses.
Rival candidates and party insiders criticized the two Democrats, saying they are selectively campaigning.
"I, myself, am running a national campaign," said Senator John Edwards of North Carolina after he spoke at a children's forum at the University of New Hampshire. "I intend to be the nominee for the entire country, so I will compete in Iowa, of course."
Senator John F. Kerry, the only other among nine Democratic presidential candidates to campaign yesterday in New Hampshire, was equally skeptical of the Lieberman and Clark strategy. This state holds its primary eight days after the Iowa caucuses.
"I'm running a national campaign, and I think people expect somebody who wants to be president of the United States not to do it on tactical-advantage ways, but to appeal to all Americans," the Massachusetts Democrat said.
Steve Elmendorf, campaign manager for US Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, questioned the Liberman and Clark decision in light of the unusually large field of candidates, as well as the short primary calendar. Iowa and New Hampshire voting will be followed by six presidential primaries and caucuses on Feb. 3, and four more states vote the following week.
"Nobody's ever gotten the [Democratic] nomination after skipping Iowa," Elmendorf said. "You're not part of the mix in the first-covered event, and it presents a general-election problem, in that it's a battleground state. The people there don't take too kindly to being passed over."
Lieberman and Clark reached a similar decision, but they did so for vastly different reasons.
Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, is known for his moderate to conservative views, which have not been well received in Iowa, a more liberal state. Most troublesome among Iowa's vocal antiwar movement has been the senator's support of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"There's a different primary calendar than in other years, so for us the decision was to match our candidate with the areas where he had the best chance of succeeding," said Kristin Carvell, the senator's New Hampshire press secretary.
Clark entered the race only last month. The Arkansan had trouble catching up in a state where organization is at a premium. Unlike primary states, where voters go to the polls and cast individual votes, caucus-goers meet in groups and coalesce around different candidates, making it imperative that candidates spend time meeting people and persuading them to persuade others to support them.
"New Hampshire is the starting gate for many campaigns," said Manchester lawyer George Bruno, who led a movement to draft Clark into the campaign and has been a top supporter in New Hampshire. "It's the first real election. It's where Bill Clinton came out of the box."
Both campaigns also cited history in making their case, pointing out that Senator John S. McCain of Arizona won the 2000 New Hampshire primary by 19 percentage points over Governor George W. Bush of Texas, even though McCain had skipped the earlier caucuses, which Bush won.
In Lieberman's case, skipping Iowa will allow him to redeploy staff to New Hampshire. Yesterday the campaign said it was opening new offices in Laconia, Lebanon, Salem, and Berlin, for a total of 10 in the state. The campaign also announced the hiring of 16 staff members yesterday, expanding the payroll to 47, with five more workers from Iowa expected soon.
Clark's campaign has hired Steve Bouchard, the former New Hampshire campaign manager for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, and taken over the office space and supplies abandoned by Graham when he quit the race earlier this month. Joanna Weiss of the Globe staff contributed to this story. Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. 