Slow going on campus campaign front

DURHAM, N.H.
BACK WHEN I was in college a quarter of a century ago, if a major party's presumptive presidential nominee had spoken on our campus, it would have been a very big deal.

Indeed, when surrogates came to debate the cases for Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter before the 1980 Maine caucuses, students flocked to see them. And when California governor Jerry Brown, also a candidate, showed up in person, there wasn't a seat to spare in the largest lecture hall on campus.

Thus it seemed odd at the University of New Hampshire on Monday to witness the relatively light turnout John Kerry drew.

The Durham campus has about 13,000 students, undergraduate and graduate. The Whittemore Center hockey arena holds about 5,000 people. The official estimate was that 1,500 came to see Kerry, though as one public safety official noted, that was a generous guess. By my calculation, 1,200 seemed nearer the mark. Even then, many of the students I talked to said they had come mostly to hear the sweet acoustic sounds of Guster, the Boston band that warmed up the crowd.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the problem was the candidate. Outside, the UNH College Republicans had mustered only a handful of students, two of whom dressed as giant beach flip-flops, to accuse Kerry of changing his stands for political reasons. (A half-dozen made it inside, where they briefly clapped flip-flops to taunt Kerry, who riposted that he would send people to his Republican rival's events "so they can bang their unemployment checks together.")

Even the students seemed surprised that the crowd wasn't bigger.

Their explanations varied: Some might have taken a long Easter weekend, while others perhaps felt the irresistible lure of afternoon classes. Or were suffering from primary season burnout. But a number acknowledged that many students simply weren't interested in politics. "Most people are just like, `whatever,' " said James Stegner, a freshman and cohost of the "Two Kings" radio show on WUNH.

"It is notoriously hard to get people interested," said Katie Kiernan, a 2003 UNH graduate. "I think a lot of colleges are like that. I don't think it is just UNH." Kaitlyn Smith, a member of the UNH College Republicans, said her organization had 25 to 30 truly active members. Senior Meghan McPherson, president of UNH for Kerry, said the active core of her group was about 30. That's about 60 out of an undergraduate student body of 10,900.

It is, of course, everyone's perfect right not to care a fig about the presidential campaign. And yet, in an election with real and substantial differences, a contest between a Republican president more conservative than any since Ronald Reagan and a Democrat nominee arguably as liberal as any since Walter Mondale, it was disappointing to see the UNH studentry seem to shrug its collective shoulders.

"You are dealing with a very apathetic generation and a very apathetic student body as well," explained McPherson. "It's the way they have grown up. They haven't had a cause they felt affected them enough to mobilize about. I hope we see a change of that in this election."

I hope so too -- no matter which candidate they decide to support. One's college days should be a time to jump feet first into the fray. Or, at very least, to take advantage of an occasional front-row seat on the great democratic spectacle that is a presidential campaign -- whether or not Guster is playing.

This is as close as I've come to cracking the veil of secrecy over Kerry's vice presidential selection process. Bill Shaheen, husband of campaign national chair Jeanne Shaheen and an instrumental Kerry operative in his own right, thinks Kerry should pick North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

"I could live with four or five others, but he is the one who could really give Cheney a run for his money in a debate," says Shaheen.

And so what does his wife think? "She never tells me what she thinks," Shaheen says. "I tell her all the time, but does she tell me? No."

Nor me. "We have a process in place, and I am going to let that process run its course," Mrs. Shaheen says. But can it really be that she hasn't confided her own VP preference to her husband? "That is true," she says. "There are some things I don't even share with my spouse." Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.