Local concerns pop up in debate

DURHAM, N.H. -- His first semester of college is winding down, but Jefferson Phillips did not have next week's exams on his mind last night. Instead, the 19-year-old University of New Hampshire freshman planned to sit in his dorm room and watch a debate between the Democratic presidential contenders, hoping to settle on whom he will support next month in the New Hampshire primary.

In between criticisms of President Bush's foreign and domestic policies, each of the nine tried to sway New Hampshire voters, about a quarter of whom remain undecided. If Phillips listened closely between an opening discussion about Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean and a nearly 45-minute closing discourse about Iraq policy, Phillips had a chance to hear a lot about issues that dealt directly with his Hampton Falls hometown and the Granite State.

Warren Rudman, the former New Hampshire senator who has become an antiterrorism expert, is featured in a local television commercial, asking the nine candidates to outline how they plan to secure nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union.

Asked to respond to that ad, Wesley K. Clark, the former Army general from Arkansas, replied: "You can get a whole lot more security for the United States of America in nonproliferation out of a billion dollars spent on this program than by putting another billion dollars into Iraq."

Scott Spradling, a Manchester political reporter who comoderated the debate, asked Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri why he had failed to use his previous position as House Democratic leader to provide ample federal money for federally mandated special education -- an financial back-breaker in the state.

"Why haven't we been able to do it? Because we've had to deal with Republicans who don't want to fund unfunded mandates," the congressman replied.

Meanwhile, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts chastised the other moderator, ABC's Ted Koppel, for asking him to theorize why Dean, the former Vermont governor, had vaulted to the top of the polls. Instead, Kerry said a more pressing local concern was MTBE, or methyl tertiary-butyl ether, a federally mandated fuel additive that the New Hampshire government believes is worsening groundwater pollution.

Mentioning a Salem, N.H., couple who must rely on bottled water, the senator said: "MTBE is the culprit . . . This administration is trying to prevent accountability for MTBE . . . Those are the things that the American people care about."

The debate in New Hampshire between the crowded field of Democratic challengers came 49 days before the primary election and against a backdrop of polls showing Dean with a 30-point lead. Yet it also came three weeks before January, the month where history shows many New Hampshire voters decide their vote.

Phillips, a registered Democrat, said he is intrigued by the candidacies of Dean, the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who responded to a question about job layoffs at the New Hampshire mills in Berlin and the Tyson food plant in Manchester. And like many in this state, Phillips remained undecided.

He disagreed with a point raised during the debate, that candidates such as Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, former senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, among others at low standing in recent polls, should consider yielding to stronger candidates.

Events like last night's debate, with its focus on the local in addition to the national, will generate clarity soon enough.

"I think if everybody said that," Phillips said as he stood outside the Town & Campus bookstore, "we'd only have two candidates. I want to pick the person closest to my views and may the best man win. I'm not a person to settle for the lesser of two evils."

Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.