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Politics

Choices not yet made

Undecided independents may settle New Hampshire's primaries Tuesday.

By WES ALLISON Times Staff Writer
Published January 6, 2008

Jennifer Wilson, 21, of Philadelphia wears her heart on her sign while waiting for a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in Nashua, N.H., on Saturday morning. More than 2,000 people withstood temperatures in the 20s to hear the senator's campaign speech.
	[Martha Rial | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Martha Rial | Times] Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama rallies the crowd at Nashua High School North Saturday morning in New Hampshire. "You don't have to agree on everything to agree on some things," Obama told a crowd of more than 2,000. "If you're confident in your position, you can work across the aisle to find some common ground."

CONCORD, N.H. - In a wind-swept brick courtyard banked with snow stood a bareheaded, bare-handed woman out for a smoke who, despite her political pacifism, is a campaign manager's worst nightmare.

While others might find the two candidates vying for Mary Cowan's vote to be opposites, she is torn and probably won't choose until the polls open Tuesday morning: John McCain or Barack Obama?

McCain, a Republican, is the veteran U.S. senator from Arizona who's counting on New Hampshire to revive his political aspirations and keep him on the narrow, twisted road to the White House. Obama, a Democrat, is just halfway through his first term as a senator from Illinois. Fresh from his resounding victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa's caucuses, he's counting on New Hampshire to secure his footing at the top.

By most conventional measures, McCain and Obama are day and night: old vs. young, conservative vs. liberal, ready to keep fighting in Iraq vs. ready to find a way out. McCain spent his early career as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Obama spent his organizing poor people in Chicago.

Yet in the quirky political landscape of New Hampshire, the self-appointed mastiff at the White House gate, both candidates appeal to the large and politically crucial bloc of voters: independents.

In New Hampshire's open primary system, anyone can vote in any party primary they choose, and they can even register to vote at their precinct on election day. This has amplified the importance of independents, who once again appear poised to decide who wins the Democratic and the Republican primaries on Tuesday.

What's more, a CNN/WMUR poll released Saturday showed that only 52 percent of likely Democratic voters and 44 percent of likely Republican voters have chosen. About a quarter of likely voters in both parties say they are completely undecided, and experts believe many of them are independents.

Cowan finished her cigarette. That's just the New Hampshire way.

"Two totally different views, two totally different people," said Cowan, 37. "I like John McCain, I think he carries himself very well."

And Obama?

"I like that he's definitely, honestly a family man. I just like what I've seen of him."

Obama and McCain clearly have the most to gain from New Hampshire's political independents, who account for a whopping 44 percent of registered voters.

Democrat Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, are their parties' establishment candidates. The upstart who defeated Romney in Iowa, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, drew on a wide base of conservative evangelicals that just doesn't exist in New Hampshire. Edwards, who took second in Iowa, is running a distant third in New Hampshire.

As the candidates for president zip along the state's picturesque byways, the shoulders crowded with dirty, plowed snow and blue campaign signs, McCain and Obama are tailoring their messages to those in the political middle, avoiding partisan rhetoric while touting the need to work together on providing affordable health care, better schools and national security.

"You don't have to agree on everything to agree on some things," Obama told a crowd of more than 2,000 in Nashua on Saturday morning. "If you're confident in your position, you can work across the aisle to find some common ground."

In Derry, N.H., last week, McCain held a town hall meeting with Sen. Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat from Connecticut who now calls himself an independent-Democrat.

"What's a Democrat doing supporting a Republican for president of the United States?" Lieberman said. "In these times, we have too much at stake to decide it just along party lines."

* * *

The low winter sun was barely glinting off the snow-covered grounds of Nashua High School North on Saturday morning when the first folks parked themselves outside the locked front door. By 9 a.m., two hours before Obama was to speak, more than 300 people waited in line, stamping their feet against the cold.

By 10 a.m., at 23 degrees, they numbered more than 2,000.

It was one more striking example of how seriously the people of New Hampshire take their job of vetting the presidential candidates. While many in the crowd were already on board with Obama, many others endured the cold so they could see him firsthand before deciding.

"In New Hampshire, we go to see all the candidates every four years," said Laurie Delisle, a retired teacher from Nashua who has already seen Edwards. She plans to attend a rally for Clinton in Nashua today.

"We want to weigh one against the other," she said. "It's really exciting to be part of this process, even though it's cold and hard to stand in line for hours."

Political involvement is part of the cultural fabric of New Hampshire, and it extends well beyond the presidential primaries.

"There is virtually no state that has a more direct democracy," insists Ray Buckley, chairman of the state Democratic Party.

With 400 members, the state House is the largest in the nation. That's one representative for about every 3,000 residents. Virtually every state, city and town official is chosen by popular vote, from the "governor on down to the guy who plows the roads to who supervises the library," Buckley said.

What's more, New Hampshire is the only state that requires every elected official, even the governor, to face voters every two years. Turnout in presidential elections typically exceeds 70 percent, compared with 58 percent nationally in 2004 and 56 percent in Florida.

Meanwhile, the number of independent voters has grown, and their power is palpable. In the 2006 election, independents were key to changing the state's two U.S. House seats from Republican to Democratic, while the state's U.S. senators have remained Republican.

Independent voters won the Republican primary for McCain in New Hampshire in 2000, a startling though momentary setback for George W. Bush. And Paul Manuel, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, credits independents for Obama and McCain's recent rise in New Hampshire's polls.

As recently as November, Obama was trailing Clinton by 15 points. Now, he and Clinton are tied with 33 percent of likely Democratic voters, according to the CNN/WMUR poll, which was taken after the Iowa caucuses on Thursday and released Saturday night. Edwards was third with 20 percent.

McCain also was trailing Romney by about 15 points in mid November; now he's slightly ahead, 33 percent to 27 percent, according to the poll, which was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was third with 14 percent, followed by Huckabee with 11 percent. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

In other recent polls, both Obama and McCain have led among independents.

"True, some lean left or right, but there is something that holds independents together," Manuel said. "They're not beholden to their party leaders or the party elite, and they're interested in other qualities: leadership, character, integrity, honesty. ... It's not about policy."

* * *

The New Hampshire secretary of state is predicting a record turnout for Tuesday's primaries. One concern for both McCain and Obama is how many independents will vote in each primary. A big turnout among independents in the Democratic primary, as some polls predict, would help Obama and hurt McCain. That's because McCain's race would rest more on true-blue Republican voters, who are more likely to pick Romney.

It's also difficult for candidates to determine what is driving independents. That can change from election to election, or even month to month, based on their current concerns, or their changing perceptions of the candidates. In short, they are fickle.

In interviews across the southern and central portion of the state, it was surprising how many independent voters supported McCain in 2000, for instance, but are now backing Edwards. Their reason? They feel McCain compromised the independent streak that appealed to them eight years ago in order to regain the good graces of the Republican Party.

Now they see Edwards, a firebrand populist with only a long shot of winning, as the antiestablishment candidate.

"We think for ourselves out here," said Nina Hopkins, 45, of Henniker, N.H., who was picking up Edwards fliers at his headquarters in Concord. An independent, she backed McCain in 2000, but "he has become too much of a yes-man for Bush and the GOP."

But in 2004, David Lee of Derry, N.H., ran Edwards' political action committee. Now he's co-chairman of Independents for McCain.

Despite differences with McCain's conservative positions on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues, Lee said he believes the war in Iraq and other global troubles demand McCain's experience and foreign policy know-how.

"People say we're spoiled, but we do take it seriously," said Lee, 48, an accountant. "I see these people at all the town hall meetings. The joke is that we've met the candidates three times, and we're still not sure."

Wes Allison can be reached at allison@sptimes.com or (202) 463-0577.

By the numbers

New Hampshire

1,314,895 Number of residents.

95 Percentage of population that is white.

8,968 Land in square miles.

$59,683 Median household income.

20 degrees Average temperature in January.

[Last modified January 5, 2008, 23:20:24]