Seduced by candor, independence and relentless flesh-pressing, voters in this hard-to-impress state richly honored John McCain and their own maverick tradition Tuesday in the Republican primary.
They also sent an unmistakable message to Texas Gov. George W. Bush: The coronation is off.
The Democratic verdict was more like an inkblot, a result subject to varying interpretation. The legions of independents that propelled McCain–the very kind of voters a winning candidate must attract in the fall–also nearly handed a victory to Bill Bradley in his challenge to Vice President Al Gore.
Voters expressed strong reservations about the vice president. Gore won narrowly even though he is a member of an incumbent administration, with the solid backing of party loyalists, in a time of unparalleled prosperity.
But he won, and the burden on Bradley to do the same is now absolute. Gore’s more direct, relevant appeals to traditional Democrats triumphed over Bradley’s sweeping calls for a more ephemeral “new politics.”
The challenges to Bush and Gore–once considered the anointed ones–were formidable enough to ensure that the race for the nomination will not be settled until at least March 7, when megastates California and New York join 13 other states in what in effect will be a national primary.
In many of the upcoming primaries, the institutional advantages possessed by Bush and Gore will be magnified in ways that New Hampshire, with its habitual contrariness, obscured.
McCain and Bradley are trying to make the race a referendum on character, with both offering an agenda of reform in contrast to the scandals that have marked the Clinton era. In many respects, they are delivering the same message, but it was McCain’s that had greater reach and edge.
For Bush, South Carolina, which holds its primary Feb. 19 and is the only other state where McCain has campaigned actively, is considered a fire wall that historically has protected the GOP front-runner. And his campaign has boasted repeatedly about building organizations in all 50 states. With $68 million, Bush’s campaign obviously has the resources.
But as McCain’s stunning margin of victory showed, Bush needs more than money. The governor’s prepackaged approach so far, lacking in spontaneity and fire, is likely to be revised, his success no longer preordained.
“The road to the Republican nomination and the White House is a long road,” Bush told supporters here. “Mine will go through all 50 states, and I intend to end up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Gore should benefit from contests in states like California, New York, Ohio and Georgia, where labor unions and minorities are far more prevalent. And no doubt party leaders will begin suggesting that Bradley is damaging his party by criticizing the vice president on the issue of trust.
But it was McCain who foreshadowed just how harsh that criticism would be in the autumn from Republicans. “This is the beginning of the end of the truth-twisting politics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore,” McCain said.
Though McCain’s victory was emphatic, nearly achieving a majority of the vote in a five-man field, many elements of the formula that fueled it will not be available to him as primaries come in rapid succession.
McCain ran in New Hampshire as if he were running for governor, traveling the state for months in a bus with a rolling, non-stop press conference to gain media attention he could not afford in the form of advertising. He also spent 73 days in the state, participating in 114 town hall meetings, where he connected with Republicans and independents with blunt talk and a reform agenda.
He is offering himself as a combination of Ross Perot in 1992, railing against the “special interests” of Washington, and of Harry Truman in 1948, promising a give ’em hell presidency. His victory also will invite a new and heightened test of his rhetoric to see if it matches his record during long service in the capital he now decries.
Independents provided his large margin, but they were only part of the story. McCain also won among registered Republicans and among those who identified themselves as conservatives.
The breadth of McCain’s victory also provides a test of whether the message of reform will sell elsewhere to a public almost terminally cynical about the ways of Washington.
Gore, whose campaign as recently as Monday had anticipated a comfortable victory, nonetheless exploited the backing of Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and union workers to pull ahead of his lone challenger.
He became the only candidate in either party since 1976 to win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Gore touched all of his party’s core constituencies in his victory speech and no doubt will leverage them in the primaries to come. Bradley actually has more campaign money than Gore, though, and was in no way cowed by his loss. He spoke of Gore as a “caretaker of established interests” and warned that “a political party without a grand purpose will lose its ability to command the allegiance of the people.”
Gore countered by speaking about specifics–education, Medicare, clean air and water–all under the rubric of a “fight” he would lead.
Bradley showed his own feistiness by challenging Gore to a weekly series of debates, an offer that Gore might find difficult to refuse given that he has issued his own twice-weekly debate offer. Late Tuesday, Gore’s campaign said it wanted to stick to its original offer.
Bradley, trailing Gore badly in preprimary opinion polls after losing by a wide margin in Iowa, started to come back against the vice president after a vigorous debate performance last week, during which he repeatedly challenged Gore’s truthfulness. It is a theme likely to be repeated in the five weeks between New Hampshire and the March 7 contests.
New Hampshire voters’ strikingly large turnout provided a refreshing, civic-minded counterweight to the relatively low turnout in Iowa a week ago.
But so far, only two small states have passed judgment in the race to succeed President Clinton.
The muddle means that this time, despite the nation’s stated affection for the quaintness of New Hampshire and Iowa, the largest states will sort it all out.
