The voters of New Hampshire pass judgment Tuesday on President George Bush and give the nation its first indication of which Democrats might survive in the long run to the party`s presidential nomination.
The five main Democrats, with Paul Tsongas at the head of the pack in polls, campaigned on Presidents` Day to make a final impression on voters in this state with an outsized say about who wins the White House.
Patrick Buchanan, the Republican challenging President Bush from the Right, carried his rebel`s message on the trail, too, while Bush campaigned from Washington. The president spent Saturday and part of Sunday campaigning in New Hampshire.
After a volatile week in which candidates sought to change opinions and enlist the undecided, Monday`s major goal was to reinforce campaign themes that the candidates hope will result in success on Election Day and then resonate across the nation.
The Bush campaign knows it has trouble in New Hampshire, where the economy has been battered by recession and where conservative Republican voters are angry that the president broke his 1988 ”no new taxes” pledge.
As at other campaign stops, Buchanan was received warmly Monday at Exeter. He said his campaign has built up ”tremendous momentum” that will carry him past Tuesday and down South for primaries that start in March.
Whether Buchanan can mount an equally strong challenge outside New Hampshire is questionable. Many observers think his hastily organized campaign won`t be as successful elsewhere. But there is little doubt the conservative commentator has made the primary a referendum on Bush. His sharp attacks have thrown the president on the defensive.
Bush was busy Monday on the telephone, talking from Washington on New Hampshire radio shows and sending the message that he knows about the state`s troubles and feels for its citizens. He also sent an important surrogate, first lady Barbara Bush, to New Hampshire.
”The reason the president isn`t in New Hampshire today is he has to work for a living,” she told a neighborhood group in Concord. At the airport, when a crowd began chanting ”We love Barbara,” she put her fingers to her lips and then said, ”We love George.”
The New Hampshire primary has a make-or-break tradition for Democrats and Republicans seeking their party`s presidential nomination. Every president elected since 1952 has first won his party`s pacesetting contest in the Granite State.
Such political history might have been on the mind of front-runner Tsongas, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, when he looked upon yet another audience Monday, sighed and said, ”Here we are, a day to go.”
Tsongas, who graduated from Dartmouth College in upstate Hanover, has maintained a solid lead in the polls for the past two weeks over former front- runner Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas and the rest of the field.
Clinton, meanwhile, is rebounding from the free fall he suffered after the controversy over his personal life and allegations that he maneuvered to evade the draft. He appeared to settle into a comfortable second-place position.
The tightest competition appears to be for third place, between Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. Harkin hopes to head off a late surge by Kerrey, considered by independent analysts as well as his own camp to have made a strong performance in Sunday evening`s debate.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown looks for a surprise outcome to boost his insurgent candidacy. And organizers of a write-in campaign on behalf of Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York are confident that their non-candidate`s showing will be Tuesday`s stunner.
A stunner of small proportions arrived early Tuesday from the north country hamlet of Dixville Notch, which registered its 31 votes just after midnight:
Libertarian candidate Andre Marrou led all candidates with 11 votes.
Among Democrats, Clinton notched 3 votes and Tsongas 2. Among Republicans, Bush beat Buchanan by a 3-to-1 margin-9 votes to 3. (Three Republicans wrote in consumer activist Ralph Nader.)
In all, there are 36 candidates on the Democratic primary ballot.
The major focus has been on the five contenders who crisscrossed New Hampshire`s more populous southern region, where most of its Democrats live. Slightly more than 100,000 votes will be cast in the party`s primary, in a state with a population of about 1 million.
To that end, all five, taking advantage of a balmy winter holiday to hammer home their messages, stepped up the pace of eye-to-eye campaigning with voters-another New Hampshire tradition.
Tsongas, the social liberal and fiscal conservative, told an audience at Phillips Exeter Academy, ”I`m an aggressively pro-economic-growth, expand-the-economic-pie Democrat.”
Clinton barnstormed 11 cities in an effort to leave voters with the impression that he is an innovative and accomplished leader of presidential stature, fighting off the perception that he was a womanizer and Vietnam-era draft dodger.
A confident Kerrey, meanwhile, focused on his sponsorship of a national health insurance measure in Congress.
”National health insurance is a defining issue for me in this campaign,” Kerrey told a forum of the American Association of Retired Persons in Concord. ”Sometimes I run the risk of being a single-issue candidate, but I make no apologies.”
Kerrey called the health-care issue ”a metaphor for what America has to do” to restore its moral responsibility in the post-Cold War era.
Down the highway a piece, in tiny Allenstown, Harkin sought to remain competitive with Kerrey for third place, or possibly a surprise vault into second, by emphasizing his traditional Democratic liberalism.
Harkin, who has promised to create 1 million new jobs in his first year as president, campaigned Monday with liberal Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). He displayed plans for unfunded Allenstown infrastucture improvements that could be paid for in 1993 with part of $35 billion in ”peace dividends” that he says he would put into rebuilding America.
As they stumped Monday, there were signs that all the candidates have set their sights beyond New Hampshire and Tuesday`s election.
The campaign calendar will fill up quickly, starting with Sunday`s Maine caucus, and those who aren`t winnowed out of the race won`t linger in New England.
An early dark horse to win the nomination, Tsongas on Monday portrayed himself as a national candidate, saying he could appeal to moderate Republicans in a general election. Tsongas, who will travel Wednesday to Maryland to campaign for its March 3 primary, contended that independent polling shows him running second in Maryland and Colorado.
”Ideas travel. A vision has a capacity to draw people,” said Tsongas, once written off as merely a New England candidate. ”Yes, I am a regional candidate: the North, South, East and West.”
Seven states, including Maryland, Colorado and Georgia, will hold contests March 3.
Clinton plans to go to Georgia to shore up his Southern base and prepare for the South Carolina primary on March 7 and the Super Tuesday battery of primaries on March 10.
