The Concord Monitor
March 29, 2006

A call to arms for primary defenders
With threats looming, a time for celebration

By LAUREN R. DORGAN
Six hundred people gathered last night to celebrate New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary at a bipartisan dinner. The gathering was a strange mix of political flavors, with the former state chairman of Ronald Reagan's campaign seated beside Eugene McCarthy's niece.

The dinner, a fundraiser for the New Hampshire Political Library, lost its keynote speaker at the last minute. George Stephanopoulos, ABC News' chief political correspondent, called the library yesterday morning to say he had to stay in Washington to cover the unexpected resignation of President Bush's chief of staff.

But the show went on, with a bit more homegrown flair. Perhaps the biggest star of the evening was Secretary of State Bill Gardner, who has continued to schedule New Hampshire's primary ahead of every other state's, despite numerous challenges. Just the mention of his name garnered a standing ovation last night, from a crowd that included politicians and businesspeople who could afford the $100-a-plate ticket.

The celebration is an annual event, but this year's had a particular urgency because of a current effort by the Democratic National Committee to overhaul its primary calendar. A panel has recommended inserting one or two caucuses between Iowa's caucus and New Hampshire's primary and adding one or two primaries shortly thereafter.

Former Ambassador Terry Shumaker, who helped run Bill Clinton's New Hampshire 1992 campaign, spoke about what it was like to sit on that panel.

"It was the equivalent of a year-long root canal without anesthesia," he said.

Only he and former governor Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire's other representative to the panel, voted against the final report. Shumaker repeated the rallying cry of those looking to preserve the primary: "In Bill Gardner I trust."

The oft-cited reason for the DNC's reconsideration of the primary calendar - the lack of ethnic diversity in New Hampshire and Iowa - was mentioned only once last night. Emcee Scott Spradling, a political reporter for WMUR, referred to "cultural questions” about the primary, while extolling the importance of having candidates answer questions from regular people.

Although he couldn't attend, Stephanopoulos offered a brief taped statement, in which he spoke of his first New Hampshire primary experience: working for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

"I started the way you're supposed to start: walking precincts, going door to door in Concord," he said.

And he spoke of waking up in a New Hampshire hotel the morning after Clinton finished second in the 1992 primary. All of a sudden, Stephanopoulos recalled, there were secret service agents in the hallway. He knew the days of retail politics were over.

Gardner and Gov. John Lynch also made the case for the door-to-door politics New Hampshire is known for.

Gardner spoke of a culture of politics and connectedness that has grown up over 200 years in New Hampshire. He spoke of town meetings and of the size of the state's House of Representatives and of the number of people who've run for office here. California's House of Representatives would have to have 11,000 members to have the kind of representation New Hampshire has, he said. About three-quarters of the state's children, grades one through eight, visit the State House on school tours he said.

"It's not like that in other parts of the country," he said.

Lynch said he was "disturbed” by the DNC's efforts to weaken the primary.

"We're in an age now where what passes for town hall meetings are scripted questions from pre-screened guests," he said.

The ceremony posthumously honored former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who died earlier this year. As an underdog, anti-war candidate, McCarthy nearly defeated President Lyndon Johnson in New Hampshire's 1968 Democratic primary. That contest is often cited as pivotal to the importance of the state's primary.

"I think he thought a candidate was tested in the snows of New Hampshire," said his niece, Mary Beth McCarthy Yarrow, who traveled from New York to accept the award for her uncle. Yarrow, a documentary filmmaker, met her former husband, Peter Yarrow of the musical group Peter, Paul and Mary, on that campaign, she said.

Seated next to Yarrow at the dinner was Gerald Carmen, a former chairman of the state Republican Party who headed Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign in the state. He was the final honoree of the evening.

When he took the podium, he said that he'd been given only a minute to speak but that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the program.

"On top of that, I've never been much for nonpartisanship," he said, to the cheers of a table-full of Manchester Young Republicans in the back. While primary challenges had come from other places in the past, "right now, it's a Democrat problem," he said.

He challenged Lynch to mobilize the state and everyone to force "big shots" who come through the state to get behind the primary.

Carmen said that he liked sitting next to Yarrow, and that McCarthy was his kind of Democrat.

"He was out trying to do something," he said. "What you really want is someone who stands for something.

(Retrieved March 30, 2006 at http://www.concordmonitor.com)